


J 



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I 



iiTfiuifiiisisiflAuoiJiiOG irtf\iSfE^(yj D 



^jpgcaMEMS of various racSS of ka N k B nd. 




VIH. AUSTRALIAN. 




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Ancient E6yptian Scribe. V* Dyn — Mariette's Discoveries, 1852-4. 

(Louvre Museum:) 



M.HevfrU.,j))ioto6.,Ea 



ES.DuvaUColift.fW' 



INDIGENOUS RACES 

OF 

THE EARTH; 

OR, 
INCLUDING 

MONOGRAPHS ON SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS OF PHILOLOGY, ICONOGRAPHY, 
CRANIOSCOPY, PALEONTOLOGY, PATHOLOGY, ARCHEOLOGY, COM- 
PARATIVE GEOGRAPHY, AND NATURAL HISTORY: 

CONTRIBUTED BY 

ALFRED MAURY, 

MBLIOTnECATRE DE L'lNSTITUT DE FRANCE; SECRETAIRE GENERAL DE LA SOCIETE" DE GEOGRAPHY 

DE PARIS; MEMBRE DE LA SOCIETE" IMPERIALS DES ANTIQUAIRES DE FRANCE, DES ACADEMIES 

DE BORDEAUX ET DE CAEN, DES ACADEMIES ET SOCIETES D'ARCHEOLOGLE DE BELGTQUE, 

DE PICARDIE, DE MADRID, DES SOCIETES ASIATIQUE ET MEDICO-PS YCHOLOGIQJJE 

DE PARIS, DE LA SOCIETE" d'HISTOIRE DE LA SUISSE-ROMANDE ET DE LA 

SOCIETY DE LITTERATURE NEERLANDAISE DE LETDE; CHEV ALTER 

DZ L'ORDRE DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, ETC. ETC. ETC., 

FRANCIS PULSZKY, and J. AITKEN MEIGS, M.D., 



OF LVCBOCZ AXD CSELFALVA, profrssor of the institutes of medicine in the Phila- 

delphia COLLEGE OF MEDICINE; LIBRARIAN OF THE 
ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADEL- 
PHIA ; RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE 
PHILADELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SO- 
CIETY; FELLOW OF THE COL- 
LEGE OF PHYSICIANS. ETC. 



FELLOW OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY; COR- 
RESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTO DI COR- 
RL3PONDENZA ARCHEOLOGICA DI RO- 
MA; LATE UNDER SECRETARY 
OF STATE IN HUNGARY, 
ETC. ETC. ETC., 



("With Communications from Prof. Jos. Leidy, M. D., and Prof. L. Agassiz, LL. D.) 

PRESENTING FRESH 

INVESTIGATIONS, DOCUMENTS, AND MATERIALS; 

BY 

J. C. NOTT, M.D., and GEO. E. GLIDDON, 

MOBILE, ALABAMA, FORMERLY U. S. CONSUL AT CAIRO, 

AUTHORS OP "TYPES OP MANKIND." 



PHILADELPHIA : 

J. B . LIPPINCOTT & CO 
LONDON: TRUBNER & CO. 

185 7. 




(J N 2-3 



FIRST ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HAIL, BY INTERNATIONAL ARRANGEMENT WITH THE AMERICAN PROPRIETORS. 

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of 

Pennsylvania. 






TO 

RICHARD K. HAIGHT, 

NEW YORK. 

I bave presumed on our long friendship, and the associations arising 
from our joint archseological and ethnological pursuits — as well as on 
my having been your colleague in numerous scientific societies in 
various parts of the world, for a period of more than twenty years — 
to dedicate this volume to you. 

G. R. G. 



PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENT. 



Through the medium of a Prospectus, we have again invited 
public co-operation in bringing out a second work on Anthro- 
pology ; and it is with no slight satisfaction that we now 
publish a larger list of Subscribers than even that received for 
" Types of Mankind." 

Such testimonials of the interest taken by our fellow-citizens 
in scientific researches, are regarded by ourselves, as they will 
doubtless be by others both at home and abroad, as the best 
evidence of the love of knowledge developed in the United 
States through our educational institutions. 

Under this conviction, we have endeavored to augment the 
value of " Indigenous Races of the Earth," by sparing neither 
exertion nor outlay to make the book itself worth}' of the 
patronage bestowed upon it. Whether in the number of the 
wood-cuts and the lithographic plates, or as regards the anjount 
of letter-press, it will be found, by those who may choose to 
compare the promises made in our Prospectus with their fulfil- 
ment in the present volume, that we have really given much 
more than could have been anticipated in a book the cost of 
which, to the American Subscriber, is only Five Dollars per copy. 

(v) 



VI PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCEMENT. 

It is to this practical consideration alone that we appeal, 
should criticism allege that any of the mechanical part of this 
work might have been more skilfully executed. Had the price 
been higher, the performance would assuredly have been 
superior 

In j ustice to the labors of the Authors and the Contrib utors, 
we will state, that no monetary compensation is equal to the 
pains bestowed by each upon his part; and several of the 
above have kindly furnished their quota without the remotest 
pecuniary object; at the same time, let it be noted, that the 
accomplished lady to whose single pencil four-fifths of the 
entire series of illustrations herein contained are due, sponta- 
neously volunteered, and for two years has employed it, in 
behalf of her husband's literary interests. 

Aside, also, from the communications made by Professors 
Joseph Leidt and L. Agassiz, as well as by Lieut. Haber- 
sham, U. S. N., the reader will find in this volume several 
items of novelty, — altogether uncontemplated by us when 
the first Prospectus was issued last autumn. 

Among these may be mentioned the inedited Eskimo-cranium 
derived from the late Dr. Kane's first Arctic Expedition, and 
the equally inedited Tclmldchi-cranium and portrait presented 
by Mr. E. M. Kern, — artist in the recent North Pacific Expe- 
dition of the " Vincennes," under Captain Rodgers, U. S. N. 

We hope, therefore, that every Subscriber will feel satisfied 
that we have fully redeemed our engagements in the premises. 

J. B. Lippincott & Co., 

Publishers. 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 



BY GEO. R. GLIDDON. 



The title of the present volume, — "Indigenous Races of the 
Earth," as well as that of our former work, — "Types of Mankind," 
are due to my colleague. 

Dr. JSTott possesses, beyond most men, the faculty of epitomizing 
the gist of an argument in the fewest words. It is on that account, 
and more especially for the disappointment readers may feel upon 
finding my name substituted for my colleague's, in this part of our 
joint book, that its opening page must contain an expression of my 
regret at the only untoward event which, from first to last, has been 
encountered in the literary undertaking now brought favorably to 
an end. 

Being unavoidable, however, such issue — unforeseen but a few 
days ago — requires some brief explanation. 

On my return from Europe last May, M. Alfred Maury's manu- 
script for Chapter I. was the only part of this book in a state of com- 
pletion. Mr. Francis Pulszky's, for Chapter II., arrived in consecu- 
tive portions by the mails from London; Dr. J. Aitken 1 Meigs's, for 
Chapter III., and mine for Chapters V. and VI., were written here, 
during the past summer and autumn ; while Dr. I^ott, in the same 
interval, prepared his for Chapter TV. at Mobile. 

It having been deemed inexpedient to incur the risks of loss of 
these manuscripts by sending them hence to Mobile, Dr. ]STott, except 
through private correspondence and my oral report to him " chez 
lui" last [November, was necessarily unaccpiainted with their several 
tenor : but, when receiving from his hands the manuscript for Chap- 

(Tii) 



Vlll PREFATORY REMARKS. 

ter IV., I anticipated ho difficulty in supplying him with the "proof- 
sheets" of our volume quite" in time for one — to whom the subjects 
developed in it are so familiar — to write the few pages of synopsis 
desirable for its "Prefatory Remarks." 

Under this expectation, the "proof-sheets" have been punctually 
forwarded hence to Mobile by our Publishers ; and I took for granted 
that, by the 15th February, at furthest, Dr. ISTott's second manuscript 
would have reached me here for the press. Unfortunately, we have 
all " reckoned without our host." From the latter part of December 
until, I may say, this moment, the wintry condition of the roads has 
been such as to compel my colleague to write me, almost at the last 
moment, that, having received but few of the "proof-sheets," and 
these in no connected series, he must abandou the hope of editing 
our "Prefatory Remarks." 

My individual chagrin at this contre-temps is so great that I will not 
attempt to offer any substitute for Dr. Nott's frustrated intentions. 
At a more propitious time, and through some other vehicle, I hope 
that my colleague may publish his own commentary upon " Indige- 
nous Races of the Earth," — which owes far more to his personal 
science and propulsion than appears on its face. In consequence, 
my part reduces itself to the editorship of three additional contribu- 
tions, — to three paragraphs about Egyptian ethnography — and to 
succinct observations concerning my own Chapters V. and VI. 

The gratifying communications now presented afford much scien- 
tific novelty and food for the reader's reflections. I append each in 
its order of date. 

" Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Jan. 20th, 1857. 
" Messrs. Nott & Gliddon, 

"Dear Sirs: — Your communication in regard to the hairy race 
who inhabit the Kurile Islands, and the red men of Formosa, has 
been received. 

"I take pleasure in forwarding you two 'heads ' of the former, as 
drawn by Mr. A. E. Hartman, the able artist of the United States 
Survej'ing Steamer 'John Hancock,' and only regret that I am 
unable to furnish you with similar sketches of the latter, our opportu- 
nities of examining them having been very limited. I take the fol- 
lowing extracts in regard to these slightly known races from a nar- 
rative of our Cruise which I have now in press : — 

"THE KED MEN OF THE ISLAND OF FORMOSA. 

" I will say nothing more about Formosa for the present. We left its shores about as 
■wise as we were upon our arrival, and it was not until our second visit that we picked up 



PREFATORY REMARKS. IX 

what little information now exists upon the files of the Expedition in regard to it. Upon 
leaving Keilung (the port of the island of Formosa), for Hong-Kong, we kept along the 
east coast of the island, in the vain search for a reported harbor. There was nothing to be 
seen but an iron-bound coast with range after range of lofty mountains lifting themselves 
above the heavy surf that broke along the entire beach. One day we thought we had dis- 
covered it: we saw ahead the smoke of distant villages rising back of a bight in the coast 
which looked very much like a harbor ; but, upon approaching it, we found ourselves mis- 
taken. We, however, lowered a boat and attempted to land, but the surf was breaking so 
furiously that it would have been madness to have entered it. Besides, the beach was 
crowded by naked and excited savages, who it was generally reported were cannibals, and 
into whose company we should consequently have preferred being thrown with reliable arms 
in our hands. The two convicts, whom the captain had taken in the boat to interpret in 
case of his being able to land, became so frightened at the savage appearance of those 
reported man-eaters, that they went on their knees to him, protesting, through the steward, 
that the islanders had eaten many of their countrymen, and that if he went any nearer they 
would do the same by him and the boat's crew. Finding it impossible to pass the surf, the 
boat returned onboard, and we squared away for Hong-Kong." * * * * "And now, be- 
fore I turn to my journal for a few pages in regard to our experience while coasting around 
this island, let me enlighten the reader as much as possible in regard to it from other 
sources. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, — 

" ' The Dutch at an early period established a settlement on this island. 

"'In 1625, the viceroy of the Philippine Islands sent an expedition against Formosa, 
with a view of expelling the Dutch. It was unsuccessful. . . . About the middle of the 
seventeenth century, it afforded a retreat to twenty or thirty thousand Chinese from the 
fury of the Tartar conquest. ... In 1653, a conspiracy of the Chinese against the Dutch 
was discovered and suppressed ; and, soon after this, Coxinga, the governor of the maritime 
Chinese province of Tehichiang, applied for permission to retire to the island, which was 
refused by the Dutch governor ; on which he fitted out an expedition, consisting of six hun- 
dred vessels, and made himself master of the town of Formosa and the adjacent country. 
The Dutch were then allowed to embark and leave the island. . . . Coxinga afterward en- 
gaged in a war with the Chinese and Dutch? in which he was defeated and slain. But they 
were unable to take possession of the island, which was bravely defended by the posterity 
of Coxinga; and it was not till the year 1683 that the island was voluntarily surrendered 
by the reigning prince to the Emperor of China. ... In 1805, through the weakness of 
the Chinese government, the Ladrone pirates had acquired possession of a great part of the 
southwest coast.' 

" The Encyclopaedia Americana says, — 

'"The island is about two hundred and forty miles in length from north to south, and 
sixty from east to west in its broadest part, but greatly contracted at each extremity. 
That part of the island which the Chinese possess presents extensive and fertile plains, 
watered by a great number of rivulets that fall from the eastern mountains. Its air is 
pure and wholesome, and the earth produces in abundance corn, rice, and most other kinds 
of grain. Most of the India fruits are found here, — such as oranges, bananas, pineapples, 
guavas, coeoanuts, — and part of those of Europe, particularly peaches, apricots, figs, grapes, 
chestnuts, pomegranates, watermelons, &e. Tobacco, sugar, pepper, camphor, and cin- 
namon, are also common. The capital of Formosa is Taiouan, — a name which the Chi- 
nese give to the whole island.' 

" In addition to the foregoing extracts from standard authority, we have a most, marvel- 
lous account of this island from the pen of Mauritius Augustus, Count de Benyowsky, a 
Polish refugee from Siberian exile, who visited its east coast, in 1790, in a small armed ves- 
sel containing about one hundred men. The account by this nobleman is interesting in the 
extreme, but unfortunately he is guilty of one gross and palpable falsehood, which necessa- 
rily throws a shade of distrust on his entire narrative. He speaks ' of anchoring in several 



xu 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 



boat backed into the surf in the attempt to land: he could only tremble and cry out, 'Dey 
eat man! dey eat man!' His friends on the other side had evidently impressed him with 
that unpleasant national characteristic, and hence his fright when apparently about to be 
rolled helplessly to their feet by a boiling surf. 

"The same day upon which we made this our last attempt to land among them, we 
steamed along up their coast, keeping as close as was prudent, — in fact closer, — and exa- 
mining with our glasses as far back as we could see. In this way we saw small but appa- 
rently comfortable stone houses, neatly-kept grounds, — what looked like fruitful gardens 
and green fields, — all being cultivated by 'Chinese prisoners who had not yet been eaten,' 
we were told on the other side ; or rather we were told that their friends, when captured, 
were made to work until needed for culinary purposes. 

"We were surprised at this air of comfort among half-naked savages, and could not but 
wonder how they could have built such nice-looking houses, until we finally concluded that 
their prisoners had been made to turn their hands to masonry as well as gardening. Thus 
ended our second and last visit to Formosa." 



"THE AINU, OR HAIRY KURILE. 

[See Lieut. Habersham's comments, infra, Chapter vi., pp 620-621.] 



- '.<w % 




"Hoping that the foregoing extracts are what you want, I remain, 
yours very truly, 

A. W. Habersham, H. S. K" 



PREFATORY REMARKS. xiii 

" Cambridge, Feb. 1, 1857. 

" My dear Sirs. — In answer to your queries respecting my latest 
investigations upon the question of the primitive diversity of the 
races of man, I have only a few general remarks to make. Most 
of the difficulties which have been in the way of a more speedy 
solution of that perplexing question, have arisen from the circum- 
stance, that it has been considered too isolately, and without due 
reference to the progress made in other branches of Zoology. I have 
already shown, in the 'Sketch of the natural provinces of the animal 
world, and their relation to the different types of man,' which you 
have inserted in ' Types of Mankind,' that, so far as their geogra- 
phical distribution upon the surface of the globe is concerned, the 
races of man follow the same laws which obtain in the circumscrip- 
tion of the natural provinces of the animal kingdom. Even if this 
fact stood isolated, it would show how intimately the plan of the 
animal creation is linked with that of mankind. But this is not all: 
there are other features occurring among animals, which require the 
most careful consideration, inasmuch as they bear precisely upon the 
question at issue, whether mankind originated from one stock, or from 
several stocks, or by nations. These features, well known to every 
zoologist, have led to as conflicting views respecting the unity or 
plurality of certain types of animals, as are prevailing respecting 
the unity or plurality of origin of the human races. The contro- 
versy which has been carried on among zoologists, upon this point, 
shows that the difficulties respecting the races of men are not pecu- 
liar to the question of man, but involve the investigation of the 
whole animal kingdom — though, strange as it may appear, they 
have always been considered without the least reference to one 
another. 

" I need not extend my remarks beyond the class to which man 
himself belongs, in order to show how much light might be derived, 
for the study of the races, from a careful comparison of their pecu- 
liar characteristics with those of animals. The monkeys most nearly 
allied to man afford even the best examples. The orang-outans of 
Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, are considered by some of the most 
eminent zoologists as constituting only one single species. This is 
the opinion of Andreas "Wagner, who, by universal consent, ranks 
as one of the highest authorities in questions relating to the natural 
history of mammalia; while Richard Owen, than whom no man, 
with the exception of our own Jeffreys Wyman, has studied more 
carefully the anthropoid monkeys, considers them as belonging to 
at least three distinct species. A comparison of the full and beau- 
tifully illustrated descriptions which Owen has published, of the 



XIV PREFATORY REMARKS. 

skeleton and especially of the skulls of these species of orangs, with 
the descriptions and illustrations of the different races of man, to be 
found in almost every work on this subject, shows that the orange 
differ from one another in the same manner as the races of man do; 
so much so, that, if these orangs are different species, the different 
races of men which inhabit the same countries, the Malays and the 
Negrillos, must be considered also as distinct species. This conclu- 
sion acquires still greater strength, if we extend the comparison to 
the long-armed monkeys, the Hylobates of the Sunda islands and 
of the peninsulas of Malacca and Deckan, which extend over regions 
inhabited by the Teli ngans, the Malays, and the Negrillos ; for there 
exists even a greater diversity of opinions among zoologists respect- 
ing the natural limits of the species of the genus Hylobates, than 
respecting those of the orangs, which constitute the genus Pithecus. 
I have already alluded, on another occasion, to the identity of color 
of the Malays and orangs : may we not now remember, also, a 
similar resemblance between some of the species of Hylobates with 
the Negrillos and Telingans ? 

" The monkeys of South America are also very instructive in this 
respect, especially the genus Cebus. "While some zoologists distin- 
guish as many as ten different species, others consider them all as 
one, and others acknowledge two or three species. Here we have 
again, with reference to one genus of monkeys, the same diversity 
of opinion as exists among naturalists respecting the races of man. 
But, in this ease, the question assumes a peculiar interest, from the 
circumstance that the genus Cebus is exclusively American ; for that 
discloses the same indefinite limitation between its species which 
we observe also among the tribes of Indians, or the same tendency 
to splitting into minor groups, running really one into the other, 
notwithstanding some few marked differences, — in the same 
manner, as Morton has shown, that all the Indians constitute but 
one race, from one end of the continent to the other. This differen- 
tiation of our animals into an almost indefinite number of varieties, 
in species which have, as a whole, a wide geographical distribution, 
is a feature which prevails very extensively upon the two continents 
of America. It may be observed among our squirrels, our rabbits 
and hares, our turtles, and even among our fishes ; while, in the Old 
World, notwithstanding the recurrence of similar phenomena, the 
range of variation of species seems less extensive and the range of 
their geographical distribution more limited. In accordance with 
this general character of the animal kingdom, we find likewise that, 
among men, with the exception of the Arctic Esquimaux, there is 
only one single race of men extending over the whole range of 



PREFATORY REMARKS. XV 

ISorth and South America, but dividing into innumerable tribes ; 
whilst, in the Old World, there are a great many well-defined and 
easily distinguished races, which are circumscribed within compara- 
tively much narrower boundaries. 

" This being the case, is it not plain that, unless we compare con- 
stantly the results of our ethnological investigations with the daily 
increasing information we possess respecting the relations of animals 
to one another and their geographical distribution, light will never 
shine upon the question of the races of man ? 

" There is another point to which I would simply allude. Much 
importance is attached to the affinity of languages — by those who 
insist upon the primitive unity of man — as exhibiting, in their 
opinion, the necessity of a direct affiliation between all men. But 
the very same thing might be shown of any natural family of ani- 
mals, — even of such families as contain a large number of distinct 
genera and species. Let any one follow upon a map exhibiting the 
geographical distribution of the bears, the cats, the hollow-horned 
ruminants, the gallinaceous birds, the ducks, or of any other families, 
and he may trace, as satisfactorily as any philological evidence can 
prove it for the human language, and upon a much larger scale, that 
the brumming of the bears of Kamtschatka is akin to that of the 
bears of Thibet, of the East Indies, of the Sunda islands, of Nepal, 
of Syria, of Europe, of Siberia, of the United States, of the Rocky 
mountains, and of the Andes ; though all these bears are considered 
as distinct species, who have not any more inherited their voice one 
from the other, than the different races of men. The same may be 
said of the roaring and miawing of the cats of Europe, Asia, Africa, 
and America ; or of the lowing of the bulls, the species of which 
are so widely distributed nearly over the whole globe. The same is 
true of the gackeling of the gallinaceous birds, and of the quacking of 
the ducks, as well as of the song of the thrushes, — all of which pour 
forth their gay and harmonious notes in a distinct and independent 
dialect, neither derived nor inherited one from the other, even though 
all sing thrushes^. Let any philologist study these facts, and learn, at 
the same time, how independent the animals are, one from the other, 
which utter such closely allied systems of intonations, and, if he be 
not altogether blind to the significance of analogies in nature, he 
must begin himself to question the reliability of philological evi- 
dence as proving genetic derivation. 

"Ls. Agassiz." 
Messes. Nott & Gliddon. 



XVI PREFATORY REMARKS. 

Philadelphia, Feb. 10th, 1857. 
Dr. ISTott and Mr. Gliddon, 

Dear Sirs : — Yon have frequently expressed the desire that I should 
give to you a Chapter on some ethnographic subject, which I would 
gladly have done had I made Ethnography an especial study. After 
the death of Dr. Morton, it was proposed to me to take up the inves- 
tigation of the cranial characteristics of the human races, where he 
had left it, which I omitted, not from a want of interest in ethnogra- 
phic science, hut because other studies occupied my time. Having, 
as curator of the Academy of Natural Sciences the charge of Dr. Mor- 
ton's extensive cabinet of human crania, I confided the undertaking 
to Dr. Meigs, who has shown his capability for investigating the intri- 
cate subject of Ethnography in the excellent Chapter he presents 
as a contribution to your work. To the paper of Dr. Meigs it was 
proposed that I should add notes; but after a diligent perusal it 
appeared to me so complete, that I think I could not add anything 
to enhance its value. 

While engaged in palseontological researches, I sought for earlier 
records of the aboriginal races of man than have reached us through 
vague traditions or through later authentic history, but without being 
able to discover any positive evidences of the exact geological period 
of the advent of man in the fauna of the earth. 

The numerous facts which have been brought to our notice touch- 
ing the discovery of human bones, and rude implements of art, in 
association with the remains of animals of the earlier pliocene 
deposits, are not conclusive evidence of their contemporaneous 
existence. 

It is not from the land of their birth, and upon which they moved 
and died, that we learn the history of lost races of terrestrial animals; 
it is in the beds of lakes and inland seas, and in the deltas of rivers, 
at the boundaries of their habitation. In reflecting upon the present 
condition of the habitable earth, with its teeming population and the 
rapid succession of births and deaths, we might be led to suppose 
the surface of the earth had become thickly strewn with the remains 
of animals. It is, however, no less true than astonishing, that, with 
comparatively trifling exceptions, the remains of each generation of 
animals are completely obliterated. Penetrate the forests, traverse 
the prairies, and explore the mountain chains and valleys of America, 
and seek for the bones of the generations of red-men, of the herds of 
bison, and of other animals, which have lived and died in past ages. 
.Neither upon nor beneath the surface of the earth are they to be 



PREFATORY REMARKS. XVU 

found ; for devouring successors, and the combined influence of air 
and moisture, have completely extinguished their traces. An occa- 
sional swollen carcase, borne by a river current, and escaping the 
jaws of crocodiles and fishes, leaves its remains in the bed of a lake, 
or in a delta, to represent in future time the era of its existence. 

Since the Glacial Period, or rather since tbe subsequent emergence 
of the northern zones of America and Europe from the Great Arctic 
Ocean, the general configuration of the continents bas remained 
nearly unchanged down to the present time. In consequence of 
this circumstance tbe deposits or geological formations in which we 
could most advantageously study the earliest traces of primitive 
man, are, in the greatest degree, inaccessible to our investigations. 
These deposits are the beds of modern lakes and inland seas, and 
fluviatile accumulations or deltas. Marshes, in many instances, 
have served as the depository of the larger quadrupeds, which have 
perished in the mire ; but these are places in which the remains of 
man would be rarely found, because they are naturally avoided. 

Coeval, perhaps, with the Glacial Period of the northern hemi- 
sphere, which at the present time exhibits its similitude in the 
Great Antarctic Ocean, primitive races of man may have already 
inhabited the intertropical regions ; and in the gradual emergence 
of the northern zones of the earth he may have followed the receding 
waters — traditions of which, in after ages, when conjoined with the 
view of the accumulations of drift material, may have given rise to 
the idea of a universal deluge, which appears to have prevailed 
among the aborigines of the western as well as of the eastern world. 

No satisfactory evidence has been adduced in favor of this early 
appearance of man ; but I am strongly inclined to suspect that such 
evidence will yet be discovered. 

Many animals, which we may infer to have existed in association 
with the Mastodon and Megalonyx, have so thoroughly disappeared 
from the face of nature that no trace of them is to be discovered. 
Near Natchez, Mississippi, there have been found together in the 
same deposit, the remains of the Elephant, Mastodon, Mylodon, 
Megalonyx, Ereptodon, Bison, Cervus, Equus, Ursus, Canis, the 
lower jaw of a lion, and the hip bone of a man. All the bones are 
infiltrated with peroxide of iron, and present the same appearance. 
The lower jaw of the lion, the type of the Felis atrox, is the only 
relic of the species yet discovered, though the animal most probably 
at one period ranged America as freely and for as long a time as its 
present congener of Africa and Asia. The human hip-bone alluded 
to, has been supposed by Sir Charles Lyell to have been subsequently 
2 



XVlii PREFATORY REMARKS. 

introduced among the remains of the other animals mentioned ; and 
this supposition I deem highly probable, although the bone does 
present the same appearance as the others with which it was found. 1 
We cannot, however, positively deny that it was contemporaneous 
with those of the extinct animals. 

When America was discovered by Europeans it was thickly popu- 
lated by a race of man, which appears already to have existed for 
many ages, and it is quite as probable that he had his origin on this 
continent as that men originated elsewhere; 2 and further, it is 
probable that the Red-man witnessed the declining existence of 
the Mastodon and Megalonyx, in the later ages of the glacial 
period. 

The early existence of the genera to which our domestic animals 
belong, has been adduced as presumptive evidence of the advent of 
man at a more remote period than is usually assigned. It must be 
remembered, however, even at the present time, that of some of 
these genera only a few species are domesticated: thus of the exist- 
ing six species of Equus, only two have ever been freely brought 
under the dominion of man. 

The horse did not exist in America at the time of its discovery by 
Europeans; but its remains, consisting chiefly of molar teeth, have 
now been so frequently found in association with those of extinct 
animals, that it is generally admitted once to have been an aborigi- 
nal inhabitant. When I first saw examples of these remains I was 
not disposed to view them as relics of an extinct species; for 

1 Bones of recent animals, when introduced into older deposits, may in many cases very 
soon assume the condition of the fossils belonging to those deposits. Fossilisation, petri- 
faction, or lapidification, is no positive indication of the relative age of organic remains. 
The miocene vertebrate remains of the Himalayas are far more completely fossilised than 
the like remains of the eocene deposits of the Paris basin; and the remains of the tertiary 
vertebrata of Nebraska are more fossilized than those of the secondary deposits beneath. 
The Cabinet of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia contains bones of the 
Megalonyx and of the extinct peccary, that are entirely unchanged ; not a particle of gelatin 
has been lost, nor a particle of mineral matter added, and indeed some of the bones of the 
former even have portions of articular cartilage and tendinous attachments well preserved. 

2 It is not at all improbable that man (strictly the genus Homo) may have first originated 
in central Asia. When we reflect upon the gradual advance in intelligence in the scale of 
living beings, through successive geological periods, may we not infer that the apparently 
earlier civilization of the human race in Asia is indicative of its earliest advent in that 
portion of the world ? Various races of man, in different geographical positions, may have 
acquired their peculiar characteristics (their specific origin) at successive periods long dis- 
tant from each other. Perhaps when the aboriginal progenitors of the civilized Mexicans 
and Peruvians roamed as savage hordes through intertropical America, the great Arctic 
Ocean yet concealed the present northern United States in its depths, and Asiatic civiliza- 
tion was then just dawning from ages of night. 



PREFATORY REMARKS. XIX 

although some presented characteristic differences from those of pre- 
viously known species, others were undistinguishahle from the cor- 
responding parts of the domestic horse, and among them were 
intermediate varieties of form and size. The subsequent discovery 
of the remains of two species of the closely allied extinct genus 
Hipparion, in addition to the discovery of remains of two extinct 
equine genera (Anchitherium and Merychippus) of an earlier geolo- 
gical period, leaves no room to doubt the former existence of the 
horse on the American continent, contemporaneously with the Mas- 
todon and Megalonyx ; and man probably was his companion. 

Some 'time since, Prof. F. S. Holmes, of Charleston, submitted 
for my examination a collection of fossil bones from a post-pleiocene 
deposit on Ashley River, S. C. Among remains of the extinct horse, 
the peccary, Mylodon, Megatherium, Mastodon, Hipparion, the tapir, 
the capybara, the beaver, the musk-rat, &c, were some which I con- 
sidered as belonging to the dog, the domestic ox, the sheep and the 
hog. Prof. Holmes observes that these remains were taken from an 
extensive deposit, in which similar ones exist abundantly; and he 
further adds, that he cannot conceive that the latter should have 
become mingled with the former since the introduction of domestic 
animals into America by Europeans. It is not improbable that the 
American continent once had, as part of its fauna, representatives 
of our domestic animals which subsequently became extinct- — though 
I am inclined to doubt it ; but what we have learned of the extinct 
American horse will lead me carefully to investigate the subject. 

My letter is much extended beyond what I designed, but I hope its 
facts and suggestions will have sufficient interest with you to relieve 
its tediousness. 

I remain with respect, 

at your further service, 

Joseph Leidy. 

Mr. Pulszky {infra, Chapter H., p. 109) has referred to Dr. JSTott's 
experienced consideration some very interesting points of Egyptian 
ethnology, based upon fresher discoveries than any with which we 
were acquainted on the publication of our last work in 1854. I 
have no wish to interfere with the latter's specialty of research, in 
which I trust the future may rank me also among the taught: but, 
taking for granted that the reader can verify accuracy in Egyptolo- 
gical works (abundantly cited in this as in our preceding publica- 
tion), I may here sketch some archaeological facts as preliminary 
headings for my colleague's elaboration hereafter, — being general 
results in which he and myself coincide. • 



XX PEEFATORT REMARKS. 

The Egyptians, eldest historical branch of the Hamitic group of 
races, now appear to science as terrse geniti, or autochthones, of the 
lower valley of the Nile, — and this, of course, from a period incalcu- 
lably beyond all "chronology." Upon them, at a secondary phase 
of the existence of the former, but prior even to the erection of the 
earliest pyramid of the Hid Dynasty, Semitic races by degrees 
became infiltrated and, at a later period — XlTth to XXIId Dynasties 
— superposed. From about the twenty-second century b. c, down to 
the seventh, Hyksos invasions, Israelitish sojourn, Phoenician com- 
merce, Assyrian and Babylonish relations, greatly Semitieized the 
people ; at the same time that frequent intermarriages of the phara- 
onic and hierogrammatic families with princesses and noblesse of the 
Semitic stock in Palestine, Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, mate- 
rially affected the original type of the ruling class of Egyptians. 
About b. c. 650, Psammetichus I., by throwing open the army and 
the ports of Egypt to the Greeks, introduced a third element of 
amalgamation, viz : the Indo-European ; which received still stronger 
impetus after Cambyses (b. c. 525) and his successors held Egypt 
prostrate under Arian subjection. Alexander (b. c. 332), and the 
Ptolemies, then overwhelmed Lower Egypt with Macedonians and 
other Grecians ; C^sar (b. c. 39-30), and the Roman emperors, in- 
jected streams of Indo-Germanic, Celtic, and some Sarmatian blood, 
through legionaries drawn even from Britannia et Dacia antiquse, 
into the already-altered Egyptian veins. Lastly, b. c. 641, Arabia 
sent her wild dromedary-riders along the Nile from its mouths to its 
Abyssinian sources. 

Now, at this period of Egyptian life, about twelve centuries ago, 
no population, in the world perhaps, had undergone such transforma- 
tions (individually speaking) of type as had these Hamites through 
Semitic and Indo-European amalgamation with their females, — never 
famous for continence at any time. Besides, a certain but really 
infinitesimal and ephemeral quantum of Ethiopian and Nigritian 
blood had, through importation of concubines, all along, from the 
XHth Dynasty, been flowing in upon this corrupted mass from the 
south. Preceded, under the Khalifates, by occasional Turanian 
captives ; increased during the period of the " Ghuz " through contact 
with the Mongolian offshoots of Hulagou; and stimulated daily by 
fresh accessions of "Caucasian" Memhoks, — the Ottomans, about 
a. d. 1517, commenced despoiling the fairest land amidst all those 
doomed to their now-evanescent dominion. But, — and here is the 
new point in ethnology to which the reader's attention is solicited — * 
from and after the era of the Saracenic conquest, a revulsion in the 
order of these conflicting amalgamations began to take effect. On 



PREFATORY REMARKS. XXI 

the advent of Islam and its institutions, which were received with 
rapture by the Egyptian masses, unions between the Mohammedan- 
ized Fellah women and any males but Mussulmans became unlawful. 
It will also be noted, too, that neither the " Caucasian" Memlooks, 
nor the Turanian Turks, could or can raise hybrid offspring (perma- 
nent, I mean to say), in Egypt: and again, that all these importations 
of foreign rulers, since the time of Cambyses, consisted in soldiery, — 
very disproportionate in numerical amount to the gross bulk of the 
indigenous agricultural population. 

Hence, under Islamism, the people began to pause, as regards 
any important effects, in this promiscuous intermixture with alien 
races; except (in cities chiefly) with their congeners the Arabs. 
But, on the other hand, among the decaying mongrels termed 
"Copts" (Christian Jacobites) — no Muslim law forbidding their 
intercourse with any nation — the action of hybridity has never 
stopped from that day to this: which is the simple rationale of the 
discrepant accounts of tourists in respect to the multiform varieties 
beheld in this small section of the Egyptians. Now, from the com- 
mencement of that pause, in the 7th century of our era, down to 
the present time, some thirty-six generations have elapsed ; during 
which the Muslim peasant population — that is, between two and 
three millions — intermarrying among themselves, have really ab- 
sorbed, or thrown off, those alien elements previously injected into 
their blood, — and thus, the Fellahs of the present day have, to an 
amazing degree, and after some fifty centuries, actually recovered 
the type of the old IVth dynasty. Indeed, one might almost assert 
that, from blank centuries before Christ down to the XlXth century 
after, the greatest changes which time has wrought upon the bulk 
of the indigenous Egyptian race reduce themselves, — in religion, to 
Mohammed for Osiris ; in language, to Semitic for Hamitic ; in insti- 
tutions, to the musket for the bow; but, in blood, to little if any. 
See again Mr. Pulszky's Chapter (I, pp. 107-122), and our plates 
(I and II, infra). 

One word more, as concerns my individual contributions in 
Chapters V and VI. 

With the exception of Chapter m, which Dr. Meigs has been so 
good as to revise himself, the entire labor of editorship has fallen 
upon me ; and, as an inevitable consequence, I have not had the 
time, even supposing possession of the ability, to bestow upon my 
own contributions the verbal criticism they might, otherwise, have 
received. Furthermore, apart from a few pages of my manuscripts 
regarding the natural history of monkeys submitted last summer to 
the obliging perusal of my friends, Prof. Leidy and Dr. Meigs, I 



XXU PREFATORY REMARKS. 

have neither consulted anybody as to the subjects upon which I 
proposed to treat, nor has any one seen the "revises" until the 
plates were stereotyped. Consequently, for whatever I may have 
written, with a free pen and open utterance, no person but myself is 
responsible. 

If the reader will complaisantly bear in mind that the Chapters, 
severally chosen by my colleague Dr. Nott, and our collaborators, 
had already covered a vast range of "Ethnological Inquiry," — upon 
which, whether acquainted with the themes or not, delicacy forbade 
my trenching — he will perceive the reason why, under the caption 
of "the Monogenists and the Polygenists," I have endeavored to 
fill up some gaps in what I deem to be ethnographical desiderata. 
Such as these facts or deductions of my own may be, I submit them 
unreservedly to public criticism; at the same time that, although not 
advanced with indifference to either, they must take their chance, 
without courting approbation, or deprecating blame. 

G. R. G. 

Philadelphia, 20th Feb., 1857. 



CONTENTS. 



Paoe 

PREFATORY REMARKS — by Geo. R. Gliddon vii 

LETTER FROM LIEUT. A. "W. HABERSHAM, U. S. N., (with 1 wood-cut) . . viii 

LETTER FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ xiii 

LETTER FROM PROF. JOSEPH LEIDY xvi 

Chap. I. — On the Distribution and Classification of Tongues, — their rela- 
tion to the Geographical Distribution of Races ; and on the 
inductions which may be drawn from these relations — by 
Alfred Maury 25 

II. ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR Art BY 

Francis Pulszky, [with 98 wood-cuts and IX lithographic Plates, 

3 colored) 87 

III. — The Cranial Characteristics of the Races of Men — by J. Aitken 

Meigs, [with 87 wood-cuts.) 203 

IV. — Acclimation; or, the comparative influence of Climate, Endemic 

and Epidemic Diseases, on the Races of Men — by J. C. Nott. . . 353 

V. — The Monogenists and the Polygenists ; being an exposition of the 
doctrines of schools professing to sustain dogmatically the 
Unity or the Diversity of Human Races; with an inquiry into 
the Antiquity of Mankind upon Earth, viewed Chronologically, 
Historically and Pal^eontologically — by Geo. R. Gliddon, 
(with 4 wood-cuts.) 402 

VI. — Section I. — Commentary upon the principal distinctions observ- 
able among the Various Groups of Humanity — (with a tinted litho- 
graphic Tableau containing 54 human portraits.) 603 

Section II. — On the Geographical Distribution of the Simile in 
relation to that of some inferior Types of Men (with a tinted 
Map containing 54 Monkeys and 6 human portraits) — by Geo. R. 

Gliddon 638 

(xxiii) 



LITHOGRAPHIC PLATES. 



Page — Explanations. 
Plate I. — Frontispiece, colored. "Ancient Egyptian Scribe. Vth Dynasty. — 

Mariette's Discoveries, 1852-4," (Louvre Museum.) Ill 

II. — Fig. 1. "Ancient Scribe (ante, PI. I)— Profile."— Fig. 2. " Same head 

altered into a modern Fellith." Ill 

III.-Fig. 1. "Sepa." ) (Louvre Museum) 110 

Fig. 2. " Nesa." j l ' 

IV. — "Skhem-ka," (Louvre Museum) 110 

V. — Fie. 1. " Pahou-er-nowre." ' 1 , T ^ N ,,„ 

„° „ _, , , „ „, „ > (Louvre Museum) 110 

Fig. 2. " Skhem-ka. Profile." j ' 

VI. — Egyptian head (Louvre Museum) Ill 

VII. — "Men-ka-her — Vth Dynasty," (Louvre Museum) 112 

VIII. — Fig. 1. "Aahmes-nofre-ari." } IT> ,. M > f 116 

„ 6 „ . > (Berlin Museum) -j ,,„ 

Fig. 2. " Nefer-hetep I." j v ' \ 113 

IX. - Fig. 1. " Etruscan Vase." | (BritiBh Museum) 190 

Figs. 2, 3, 4. " Etruscan drinkmg-jars. ) 

Ethnographic Tableau. — " Specimens of Various Races of Mankind." 618 

Chart. — "Illustrative of the Geographical distribution of Monkeys, in their 

relation to that of some inferior Types of Men." 641 



(xxiv) 



INDIGENOUS RACES 



THE EAETH. 



CHAPTER I. 

ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES, THEIR RELA- 
TION TO THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF RACES J AND ON THE 
INDUCTIONS WHICH MAT BE DRAWN FROM THESE RELATIONS. 

BY ALFRED MAURY, 

Librarian of the French Imperial Institute, Secretary-General of the 

80CIETE DE GEOGKAPHIE I)E PARIS. 



[COMMUNICATED TO DR. NOTT AND MR. GLIDDON.] 



SECTION I. 



Authors who have occupied themselves with the comparison of 
languages have been inclined sometimes not to distinguish, in the 
grammar, that which belongs to the very constitution of speech (itself 
nothing else than the constitution of the human mind), and that 
which appertains to such or to such another given form of utterance. 
It is here, however, that an important distinction should be made : 
because, if the difference between generic and specific characters be 
not perceived, a man is incapable of analysis ; and instead of making 
a classification he loses himself in a synthesis vague and indefinite. 

Languages are organisms that are all conceived upon the same 
plan, — one might almost say, upon the same skeleton, which, in their 
development and their composition, follow fixed laws : inasmuch as 
these laws are the consequence of this organism itself. But, along- 
side of this identity in the procedure, each family of tongues has its 
own special evolution, and its own destinies. They all possess among 

(25) 



26 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

themselves some particular analogies, which are made evident upon 
comparing these families one with another ; hut such resemhlances 
are never the same amongst many families ; and two groups, that 
have a given characteristic in common, differ through some other 
which, notwithstanding, links one of them to a group more remote. 
In brief, the specific characters of languages are like those of ani- 
mals ; no characteristic taken singly possesses an absolute value, 
being merely a true indication of lineage or of relationship. It is 
their multiplicity, the frequent recurrence of grammatical forms alto- 
gether special, which really constitutes families. The closer affinity 
becomes grasped when words are discovered, either in their " ensem- 
ble," or for uses the most customary and most ancient, to be iden- 
tically the same. 

Thus, then, we recognise two degrees of relationship among the 
idioms spoken by mankind, viz : the relationship of words coupled 
with a conformity of the general grammatical system ; or, this con- 
formity without similitude of vocabulary. Languages may be termed 
daughters or sisters when they offer the former degree of relationship, 
and allied when they are connected through the latter. 

Do all languages proceed from a common stock — from one primitive 
tongue, which has been the (souche) trunk of the branches now-a- 
days living isolately ? 

This, for a long time, was believed. Nevertheless, such belief was 
not based upon an attentive comparison of tongues that had either 
not yet been attempted, or which was hardly even sketched out : but 
it arose simply from confidence reposing upon the recital of Genesis, 
and owing to the servile interpretation that had been foisted upon 
its text. Genesis, indeed, tells us, at the beginning of its Xlth chap- 
ter, 1 — " There were then upon all the earth one single language and the 
same words." 

This remark of the sacred historian has for its object to explain 
the account of the Tower of Babylon. The nature of his narrative 
cannot occasion doubt in the eyes of criticism the least practised. 
We have here a myth that is certainly very ancient, and which the 
Hebrews had brought hack again (after the Captivity) from their 
mother-country. But it is impossible to behold in it an expose really 
historical. The motive given for the construction of the tower is 
that which would suggest itself to the mind of a simple and ignorant 
population, unable to comprehend the reason why the Assyrians 
should erect this tower destined for astronomical observations, inti- 

1 Verse 1 ; Hebrew Text (Cahen, La Bible, Traduction nouvelle, Paris, 1831, i. p. 28) — 
" And now [KuL— H-AReTs] the whole earth was of [S/iePAeH AKha.1l] one lip and of 
[DeBeRIJI AKAaDIM] one (set of) words." 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 27 

mately woven with, their religion. And the explanation of the name 
of BaBeL (Babylon) itself completes the evidence that the recital had 
been written ex post facto ; and, like so many myths, suggested by 
the double acceptation of a word. 2 

The confounding of the speech of the whole earth, could have been 
but the work of time, and of time very prolonged ; because we now 
know what lengthened persistency, what vitality, is the property of 
tongues ! One perceives in this antique legend a remembrance of 
the confusion which prevailed among the divers peoples, and amid 
the different races, who visited Babylon for political or commercial 
interests. As these populations must have been already very divided, 
their languages were parcelled out, at the period of the narrative, 
into a great number of dialects ; and the simultaneous employment 
of all these idioms in one and the same city appropriately gave it the 
name of City of confusion. Babylon, moreover (like its modern suc- 
cessor, Bagdad of the present day), was. situate almost at the point of 
partition of the two great branches of the white race, viz : the She- 
mites, or Syro- Arabians, on the one side, and of the Japetid^;, or 
Irauo-Arians, on the other. The valley of Shinar was then, there- 
fore, as the frontier-line betwixt two races who possessed some tradi- 
tions of a common origin; and the Biblical mythos of the " Tower" 
had for its object an explanation of the forgotten motives of their 
separation. 

Certainly, if one were to take the account of Genesis to the letter, 
it would be necessary to suppose that the first men had not yet 
attained more than the first degrees of speech, and that their idiom 
was then of great simplicity. Now, this primitive idiom ought to 

2 [It is an amusing coincidence that, while the above scientific passages by my erudite 
friend, M. Maury, are in the stereotyper's hands, the religious and profane press of 
the United States should be ringing with the joyful news of the actual discovery, on the 
classic plain of Arbela too, of "that Titanic structure" (as the enthusiastic penny-a-liner 
well terms it), the " Tower of Babel" ! " Surprising," indeed, would it be were such disco- 
very authentic. It becomes still more "surprising" in view of the palpable anachronisms 
by which this pious writer betrays his total ignorance of the nature, epochas, and results, 
of cuneiform researches: but, what seems most "surprising" is, that this newest canard of 
some adolescent missionary writing to Boston (the "modern Athens") from "Beirut, Dec. 
8, 1856," should travel the rounds of the whole press of America without (so far as I can 
learn) one word of critical commentary, or exposure of its preposterous fallacies. Those 
who, even in this country, follow step by step each discovery made in Assyria, for account 
of the Imperial Government, by the erudite and indefatigable Monsieur Place, as it is 
announced at Paris, are perfectly aware that every newly-examined " tower " in that region 
(besides being long posterior in age to the last built of 67 Egyptian pyramids) only affords 
additional " confirmations " of the modus through which, — during the Babylonish captivity, 
and duly registered in passages of Hebrew literature written after the "school of Esdras" 
established itself at Jerusalem — this myth of the " Tower of BaBJeL," as shown above, arose 
in the Israclitish mind. Compare Types of Mankind, 1854, pp. 297, 506, 559-60: — G. R. G.] 



28 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

have preserved itself the least altered in that very country where lan- 
guages had been one at the beginning. And yet, the Hebrew and 
Chaldsean tongues, which were those of these countries, are very far 
from belonging to what may be called the first floor in the formation 
of language. The Chinese, and the languages of Thibet as well as 
of the trans-Gangetic peninsula, have held to much more of the type 
of primitive tongues, than have those of the Semitic stock. Analo- 
gies infinitely greater ought to be perceived among the most ancient 
languages — Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanscrit, Chinese ; inasmuch as they 
should be much nearer to the source. Albeit we meet with nothing 
of the kind ; and the style of Genesis no more resembles that of the 
Chinese " Kings," than the language of the Rig-veda approaches that 
which the hieroglyphics have preserved for us. Amidst these idioms 
there exists nothing but those identities that are due to the use of 
onomatopees, which was more frequent in primitive times than at 
the present day. The grammatical forms are different. Now, let us 
note that — such is the persistency of these forms in languages — the 
Greek and the German, which have been separated from the San- 
scritic stem for more than 3000 years, have preserved, notwithstand- 
ing, a common stock of grammar. How much richer should not 
this stock have been amongst those languages of which we cited the 
names above. 

Besides, even were the similar words of these primitive idioms 
much more numerous than a few biliteral and monosyllabic onoma- 
topees, this would be far from sufficing to establish unity. Many 
similar words result, in tongues the most diverse, from the natural 
(liaisons) connections that certain sounds have with such or such 
another sensation. Between the word and the perception, there are 
very many secret analogies that escape us, and which were more de- 
cided when man lived in closer contact with nature. This is what 
the learned historian of Semitic tongues, M. Ernest Bjenan, 3 has judi- 
ciously remarked. Primitive man endeavored to imitate everything 
that surrounded him ; because he lived altogether externally. Other 
verbal resemblances are the effect of chance. The scale of sounds in 
human speech is too little extended, and the sounds themselves merge 
too easily one into another, to prevent the possibility of the produc- 
tion of a fortuitous affinity in a given case. 

Similitudes, to be veritable, ought to be grounded upon principles 
more solid than a few rare analogies. And these resemblances do 
not exist among those languages carried, according to the ipse dixit 
of the slavish interpreters of Genesis, from the valley of Shinar to 
the four corners of the world. The constitution of the tongues of 

8 Histoire et Systirne comparS des Langues Semicigiies, Paris, 8vo., Ire partie, 1855. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 29 

each, family appears as a primitive fact, of which we can no more 
pierce the origins than we can seize those of the animal species. In 
the same manner that creation has sported amid the infinite varieties 
of one and the same type, so human intelligence has manifested 
itself through a multitude of idioms which have different]/ rendered 
its conceptions and its ideas. 



SECTION n. 

The ancient grammarians, who submitted speech to a logical and 
reasoned analysis, had figured to themselves that, in its formation, the 
human mind musl have followed the rational march indicated by 
reason. An examination of the facts has proved that there happened 
nothing of the sort. 

Upon studying a tongue at the divers epochs of its grammatical 
existence, it has become settled that our processes of logic and of 
analysis were unknown to the first men. Thought presented itself 
at first under a form at one and the same time confused and complex, 
in which the mind had no consciousness of the elements of which it 
was composed. Sensations succeeded each other so rapidly that 
memory and speech, in- lieu of reproducing their signs separately, 
reflected them all together in their simultaneous action. Thought 
was wholly sympathetic. That which demonstrates it is, that the 
most ancient languages offer this character in the highest degree. 
In them the word is not distinguishable from the phrase, — otherwise 
speaking, they talked by phrases, and not by words. Each expres- 
sion is the complete organism, of which the parts are not only 
appendices one of another, but are inclosed within each other, or are 
tightly interlocked. This is what philologists have termed aggluti- 
nation, polysynthetism. Such manner of expressing oneself is doubt- 
less little favorable to perspicuity ; but, besides that the first men were 
far from possessing the clear and precise ideas of our time, their 
conception was sufficiently simple to be seized without great labor 
of reflection. Furthermore, men, without doubt, then understood 
each other rather by intuition than through reasoning. What they 
sought for was an intimate relation between their sentiments and 
those vocal signs, by the help of which the former could be manifested; 
and these relations once established, they were perceived and com- 
prehended like the play of the features, like the meaning of a gesture, 
rather spontaneously than through analysis of their parts. 

In whatever method we would explain to ourselves, however, this 
primitive characteristic of human speech, it is now-a-days not the 



30 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

less determined. The history of languages is but the continual 
march from synthesis towards analysis. Everywhere one beholds a 
first idiom giving place to a vulgar tongue, that does not constitute, 
to speak correctly, a different idiom, but which is a vernacular in its 
second pljasis, that is, at a period more analytical. Whilst the 
primitive tongue is overloaded with flexions in order to express the 
more delicate relations of thought, richer in images if perhaps poorer 
in ideas, the modern dialect is clearer, more explicit, — separating 
that which the ancients crowded together ; breaking up the mechan- 
isms of the ancient tongue so as to give to each idea, and to each 
relation, its isolated expression. 

And here let not the expressions be confounded with the words. 
The words, otherwise called the elements, that enter into the expres- 
sion, are short, generally monosyllabic, furnished nearly all with 
short vowels or with simple consonants ; but these words disappear 
in the expressions within which they enter ; — one does not seize them 
more than can the eye, in the color green, distinguish the blue and 
yellow. The composing words are pressed (imbricated, to speak with 
botanists), to such degree, that one might call them, according to 
the comparison of Jacob Grimm, blades of herbage in a grass-plot. 
And that which takes place, for the composition of the expressions, 
happens also as regards the pronunciation of the words that so strin- 
gently cling to them, viz : the same simplicity of sounds, inasmuch 
as the expression must nevertheless allow all the parts of its organ- 
ism to be seized. "ISTo primitive tongue," writes M. Jacob Grimm, 
in his memoir on the origin of speech, " possesses a duplication of 
consonant. This doubling arises solely from the gradual assimilation 
of different consonants." At the secondary epoch there appear the 
diphthongs and breakages (brisements) ; whereas the tertiary is char- 
acterized by softenings and by other alterations in the vowels. 

Above all, it is the Sanscrit which has made evident these curious 
laws of the gradual transformation of languages. The Sanscrit, with 
its admirable richness of grammatical forms, its eight eases, its six 
moods, — its numerous terminations and its varied forms enouncing, 
alongside of the principal idea, a host of accessory notions — was emi- 
nently suited to the study of the growth and decline of a tongue. At 
its debut, in the Eig-veda, the language appears with this synthetic 
character; these continual inversions, these complex expressions that 
we just now signalized as conditions in the primordial exercise of 
thought. Afterwards follows the Sanscrit of the grand epopees of 
India. The language had then acquired more suppleness, whilst 
preserving, nevertheless, the rigidity of its pristine processes : but 
soon the grammatical edifice becomes decomposed. The Pali, which 



CLASSIFICATION" OP TONGUES. 31 

corresponds to its first age of alteration, is stamped with a remark- 
able spirit of analysis. "The laws that presided over the formation 
of this tongue," writes Eugene Burnouf, 4 "are those of which the 
application is discernible in other idioms, at diverse epocbas and in 
very different countries. These laws are general, inasmuch as they 
are necessary. Let the Latin, in fact, be compared with the lan- 
guages which are derived from it; the ancient Teutonic dialects 
with the tongues of the same origin ; the ancient Greek with the 
modern ; the Sanscrit with the numerous popular dialects of India ; 
and the same principles will be seen to develop themselves, the same 
laws to be applicable. The organic inflections of the mother tongues 
subsist in part, but in an evident state of alteration. More generally 
they disappear, and are replaced ; the cases by particles, the tenses 
by auxiliary verbs. These processes vary from one tongue to 
another, but the principle remains the same. It is always analysis, 
whether a synthetical language finds itself suddenly spoken by bar- 
barians who, not understanding the structure, suppress and replace 
its inflexions ; or whether, abandoned to its own course, and by dint 
of being cultivated, it tends towards decomposition, and to subdi- 
vide the signs representative of ideas and of the relations them- 
selves." 

Tbe Prakrit, which represents the secondary age of alteration in 
ancient tongues, is submitted to the same analogies. On the one 
hand, it is less rich; on the other, simple and more facile. Finally, 
the Kawi, ancient idiom of Java, is a corruption of the Sanscrit ; 
wherein this language, deprived of its inflexions, has taken in their 
place the prepositions and the vernacular dialects of that island. 
These three tongues, themselves formed through derivation from the 
Sanscrit, soon undergo the same lot as their motber : they become, 
each in its turn, dead, learned, and sacred languages, — the Pali, in 
the isle of Ceylon and in Indo-Cbina ; the Prakrit among the Djainas ; 
the Kawi in the islands of Java, Bali and Madoura ; and in their 
place arise in India dialects more popular still, the tongues Crours, 
Hindee, Cashmerian, Bengalee, the dialect of Guzerat, the Mahratta, 
&c, together with the other vulgar idioms of Hindostan, of which 
the system is far less learned. 5 

Languages of the regions intermediary between India and the 
Caucasus offer, in their relation and affiliation, differences of the 
same order. At the more ancient periods appear the Zend and tbe 
Parsi, bound together through a close relationship with the Sanscrit, 
but corresponding to two different developments of the faculty of 

4 Sssai sur le Pali, par E. Bcrnouf et Chr. Lassen. 

6 Ernest Renan, Op. cit., "de l'origme du langage," p. 22. 



32 ON THE DISTRIBUTION' AND 

speech. The Zend, notwithstanding its traits of resemblance with 
the Vedic Sanscrit, allows our perceiving, as it were, the first symp- 
toms of a labor of condensation in the pronunciation, and of analysis 
in the expression. It wears all the external guise of a tongue with 
flexions (langue a flexion) ; but at the epoch of the Sassanides [a. d.' 
224 to 644] as M. Spiegel remarks, it already commences to dis- 
robe itself of them. The tendency to analysis makes itself by far more 
felt in the old Persic, or Parsi ; and, in modern Persian, decomposi- 
tion has attained its ultimate term. 

We might reproduce the same observations for the languages of 
the Caucasus, the Armenian and the Georgian; for Semitic tongues, 
by comparing the Rabbinical with the ancient Hebrew; but what has 
been already said suflices for the comprehension of the fact. 

The cause of these transformations is found in the very condition 
of a tongue, in the method through which it moulds itself upon the 
impressions and wants of the mind, — it proceeds from its own mode 
of generation. An idiom is an organism subject, like every organ- 
ism, to the laws of development. One must not, writes Wilhelm 
von Hulmboldt, consider a language as a product dead and formed 
but once ; it is an animate being and ever creative. Human thought 
elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought, 
language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot, therefore, remain 
stationary ; it walks, it develops itself, it grows up, it fortifies itself, 
it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude. 

The tongue sets forth with a first phonetic radical, which renders 
the sensation in all its simplicity and its generality. This is not yet 
a verb, nor an adjective, nor a substantive ; it is a word that expresses 
the common sensation that may lie at the bottom of these gramma- 
tical categories ; which translates the sentiment of welfare, of plea- 
sure, of pain, of joy, of hope, of light, or of heat. In the use that 
is made of speech, there is doubtless by turns a sense verbal or 
nominal, adverbial or qualifying ; but nothing, however, in its form 
indicates or specifies such a part (role). Very simple languages are 
still nearly all at this elementary stage. It is at a later day only that 
the mind creates those formswhich are called members of a discourse. 
These had existed without doubt virtually, but the intelligence did 
not feel the need of distinguishing them profoundly by an essential 
form. Subsequently there forms went on multiplying themselves ; 
but their abundance no less than their nature has varied according 
to countries and to races. Sometimes it is upon the verb that 
imagination has exhausted all the shades of expression ; at others it 
is to the substantive that it has attributed these modifications. Mind 
has been more or less inventive, and more or less rational : it has 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 33 

seized here upon delicacies which completely escaped it tnere ; and 
in the clumsiest tongues one remarks shadowings, or gradations, 
that are wanting to the most refined. Of this let us give an example : 
— the Sanscrit is a great deal richer than Greek in the manner by 
the aid of which it expresses the relationship of the noun to a phrase, 
and the relations of words between themselves. It possesses a far 
deeper and much purer sentiment of the nature of the verb and of 
its intrinsic value : yet, notwithstanding, the conception of the mood 
in a verb, considered as distinct from time, escaped it, — the verbal 
nature of the infinitive remained to it unknown. Sanscrit in this 
respect, therefore, yields to Greek, which, moreover, is united to it 
by very tight bands. 

Thus then, human intelligence did not arrive in eveiy language 
to the same degree, and consequently it did not create the same 
secondary wheel-work. The general mechanism presented itself 
everywhere the same ; because this mechanism proceeds from the 
internal nature of our mind, and this nature is the same for all 
mankind. 

The genius of each tongue, then, marked out its pattern ; and this 
genius has been more or less fecund, exhibits more or less of mobility. 
"Words have constantly represented the same order of objects, because 
these objects do not change according to countries or according to 
races ; but they are offered imder aspects the most varied, and these 
aspects have not always been identical under different skies and 
amid diverse societies. Hence the creation of words in unequal 
number to represent the same sum-total of known objects. The 
brilliant imagination of one people has been a never-failing source 
of new wojds, of novel forms ; at the same time that, amongst 
others, the idea has remained almost embryonic, and the object ever 
presented itself under the same aspect. If given impressions were 
paramount, the words by which they were translated became greatly 
multiplied. 

In the days of chivalry there was a host of expressions to render 
the idea of horse. In Sanscrit, the language of Hiudostan, where the 
elejihant plays a part as important as the horse among ourselves, 
words abound to designate this pachyderm. Sometimes it is de- 
nominated as "the twice-drinking animal," sometimes as "he who 
has two teeth;" sometimes as "the animal with proboscis." And 
that which happens for substantives occurs also for verbs. Among 
the American tongues, spoken by populations who had few objects 
before their sight, but whose life consisted altogether in action and 
feeling, verbal forms are singularly multitudinous. On the opposite 
hand, in Sanscrit and in Greek, which were spoken in the presence 
3 



34 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

of a civilization already advanced, amid an infinitude of productions 
of nature or of industry, the nouns take precedence over the verbs. 
Here the richness of the cases dispenses with the rigorous sense of .. 
prepositions, as occurs in Greek ; whereas among ourselves, who in 
French possess no longer any cases, the meaning of the phrase exacts 
that our prepositions should be well defined. Hence, then, the life 
itself of a people has been the source of the modifications operated 
in its tongue, and each idiom has pursued its development after its 
own fashion. 

Two causes combine towards effecting an alteration of languages, 
viz : their development within themselves, and their contact with 
foreign idioms, — above all with such as belong to families altogether 
distinct ; but the second, compared to the first, is of small account. 
The influence of neighboring foreign tongues introduces some new 
words and sundry locutions, certain " idiotisms ;" but it cannot, without 
difficulty, inject into alien speech those grammatical forms which are 
its own heritage. Its influence re-acts much more upon the style than 
on the grammar. If two languages of distinct families are spoken by 
neighboring populations, or by those living in perpetual contact, it or- 
dinarily happens that the most analytical tongue forces its processes to 
penetrate into that which is the less so. Thence it is that the German, 
brought into contact with the French, loses a portion of its syntheti- 
cal expressions, as well as the habitual use of those compound 
phrases which it received from the Asiatic speech whence it issued ; 
and that the French, when spoken by Negroes, is stripped of its 
grammatical richness, and becomes simplified almost to the level of 
an African tongue. In the same manner the Armorican, or Bas- 
Breton, whilst preserving the ground-work of Celtic grammar, is 
now-a-days spoken under a form that recalls more of French than of 
the ancient Armorican. 

One sees, therefore, that the crossing of languages, like that of 
races, has really not been very deep. Once invaded by a stranger- 
tongue, one of a nature more logical in its processes, the old lan- 
guage either has not undergone more than superficial alterations, or 
has disappeared entirely, without bequeathing to the idiom which 
followed it any inheritance but that of a few words. Such is what 
happened to Latin as regards the Gallic (G-aulois). This Celtic 
tongue is completely supplanted by the idiom of the Romans, and has 
left no other vestiges of its existence than a few words, together with, 
doubtless, some peculiarities of pronunciation also that have passed 
into the French. One perceives equally well in English, here and 
there, words and locutions that appertain to the Welsh ; and which, 



CLASSIFICATION OP TONGUES. do 

in consequence, must be a heritage of the tongue whilom spoken by 
the Kelts of Albion. 

If the grammatical dispossession of a language could have been 
wrought gradually, one ought to find some mixed phrases at the 
living period of those tongues that have been driven out by others. 
Now, such is not the case. The Basque, for example, foreign in 
origin both to French and Spanish, has indeed been altered through 
the adoption of a few words and a few locutions borrowed from these 
languages, by which it is surrounded, and, as it were, invested ; but 
it evermore clings to the basis of its structure, the vital principle 
of its organism ; and a Franco-Basque, or a Basco-Spanish, is not 
spoken, nowhere has ever been spoken. Modern Greek has appro- 
priated many words from Turkish, no less than from Italian, as well 
as some expressions of both tongues ; but its entire construction 
remains fundamentally Hellenic, notwithstanding that it belongs 
to the analytical period, and that the ancient Greek was still 
emerging frorn the synthetic. Again, the Persian, which is so 
imbued with Arabic words that writers of this language often inter- 
calate sentences wholly Arabic in their discourses, remains, never- 
theless, completely Indo-Germanic as concerns its grammar. But 
we have not seen that this tongue has ever associated the Persian 
declension with the Arabic conjugation, or yoked the Persian pre- 
positions to Semitic affixes and suffixes. Finally, the Osmanlee 
Turkish, besides incorporating words of every language with which 
the Turks have been in contact for more than a thousand years, has 
purloined all its scientific nomenclature from the Arabs, most of its 
polite diplomatic phrases from the Persians; but, whilst fusing 
Semitic as well as Indo-European exotic words into its copia ver- 
borum, the radical structure of its so-called Tartarian [or, Turanian] 
grammar, no less than its original vocabulary, is still so tenaciously 
preserved, that a coarse Siberian Yakut can even now, after ages of 
ancestral separation, communicate his simple ideas to the intelligence 
of a Constantinopolitan Turko-Sybarite. 

All these considerations show us, therefore, that the families of 
tongues are assemblages (des ensembles) very distinct, and the results 
of a diversified order of the creative faculty of speech. This faculty 
does not, then, appear to us as absolutely identical in its action ; and 
we must necessarily admit that it corresponds, under its different 
forms, to races of mankind possessing different faculties, as well for 
speech as for ideas. This is what the study of the principal classes 
or families of tongues will make still more evident ; seeing that we 
shall find them in a relation sufficiently striking to the different 
human races. 



36 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

One of the most skilful philologists of Germany, M. A. E. Pott, 
Professor of Linguistics at the University of Halle, has recently 
combated (in a work entitled, " The Inequality of Human Races, 
viewed especially as regards the Constitution of their Speech, 5 ) the hypo- 
thesis of a unique primitive language, whence all others are supposed 
to have issued ; and he has shown that it has no more foundation than 
that which would make all the species of one and the same genus 
issue from a single individual, and all varieties from one primitive 
type. He has claimed for languages an ethnological character, suited 
to the classification of races, not less certain than the physical type 
and the corporeal forms. Perhaps even, he observes, the idiom 
is a criterion more certain than the physical constitution. Does not 
speech, in fact, reflect the intelligence better, — is not language 
more competent to give the latter' s measurement, than can be gath- 
ered from the dimensions of the facial angle, and the amplitude of 
the cranium ? A powerful mind may inhabit a slender and mis- 
shapen body, whilst a well-made tongue, rich in forms and nuances, 
could not take its birth among intellects infirm or degenerate. This 
observation of M. Pott is just ; but it ought likewise to be allowed 
that the classification of languages offers, perhaps, more uncertainty 
than that of races considered physiologically. The truth of this 
remark of M. Pott must, nevertheless, be restricted ; because speech 
is not the complete measure of intelligence, taken in the aggregate. 
It is merely proportionate to the degree of perception of relationships, 
of sensibility, and of memory : because we shall see, further on, that 
some peoples, very far advanced in civilization, could have a language 
very imperfect in its forms ; at the same time that some savage tribes 
do speak an idiom possessing a certain grammatical richness. 

SECTION in. 

Philologists who have devoted themselves to the comparative study 
of the languages of Europe, MM. F. Bopp and Pott, in particular, 
have established the more or less close relationship of these tongues 
amongst each other. All, with the exception of some idioms, of 
which we shall treat anon, offer the same grammatical system, and 
a vocabulary whose words can be attached one to another through 
the rules of etymology. I say the rules, because etymology now-a- 
days possesses its own, and is no longer governed by arbitrary, often 
ingenious, but chimerical distinctions. Through the attentive com- 

5 Die Ungleichheit menschlicher Rassen haupsachlich vo.n SprachwissenschaJ '(lichen Standpunkte, 
vnter besonderer Berilchsichtigung von des Grafen von Gobineau gleichnamigen Werke; Leingo 
& Detmold, 8vo., 1S56. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 37 

parison of the changes that well-known words have undergone in 
passing from one language into another, modern philology has be- 
come enabled to grasp the laws of permutation as regards the letters, 
and the regular processes for the exchange of sounds. These facts 
once settled, it has become possible to trace backward words, in appear- 
ance strangely dissimilar, to a common root which stands forth as the 
type whence modifications have produced all these derivative words. 

It is in the Sanscrit that this type has been discovered ; or, at the 
very least, the Sanscrit presents itself under a form much more 
ancient than the European formations ; and, in consequence, it ap- 
proaches nearest to that type of which we can no longer grasp any 
but the diversified derivatives. 

In like manner, the grammar of the languages of Europe, in its 
fundamental forms, is recognized in the Sanscrit grammar. This 
grammar, of which we specified above the character and richness, 
incloses, so to speak, in substance, those of all the European idioms. 
The elements which compose these idioms are like so many debris of 
a more ancient tongue, whose model singularly approximates to the 
Sanscrit. It is not, however, that the languages of Europe have not 
each their own riches and their individual genius besides. In cer- 
tain points they are often more developed than the Sanscrit. But, 
taken in their collective amplitude, they are certainly branches more 
impoverished than that which constitutes the Sanscrit. These 
branches appertain to a common source that is called Indo-European 
or Indo-Crermanic. The sap seems, nevertheless, to have exhausted 
itself little by little ; and those branches most distant from the trunk 
have no longer anything like the youth, fulness, and life, which flow 
in the vessels of the branches of primary formation. 

Hence the languages of Europe belong to a great family, that, at 
an early hour, divided itself into many branches, of whose common 
ancestor we are ignorant, but of whom we encounter in the Sanscrit 
the chief of one of the most ancient collateral lines. We have pre- 
viously stated that the Persic (Parsi) and the Zend were two tongues 
very intimately allied to the Sanscrit. They are consequently sisters : 
and, whilst certain tongues of Europe, such as the Greek and the 
Shlavic languages, recall, in a sufficiently striking manner, the Sans- 
crit ; others, the Germanic tongues, hold more closely to the Persic 
and the Zend. 

Comparison of the languages of Europe has caused them to be 
grouped into four great classes, representing, as it were, so many sis- 
ters from the same mother, but sisters who have not been called to an 
equality of partition. The more one advances toward the East, the 
more are found those tongues that have partaken of the inheritance. 



38 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

Whilst the Sclavonic idioms, and in particular the Lithuanian family, 
have preserved, almost without alteration, the mould of which Sans- 
crit yields us the most ancient product, the Celtic languages, driven 
away to the "West, remind us only in a sufficiently-remote manner of 
the mother-tongue ; and, for a long time, it was thought that they 
constituted a group apart. 

This distribution of languages in Europe, co-relative in their affi- 
nity with the antique idioms once spoken from the shores of the Cas- 
pian Sea to the banks of the Ganges, is an incontestable index to the 
Asiatic origin of the peoples who speak them. One cannot here sup- 
pose a fortuitous circumstance. It is clearly seen that these tribes 
issuing from Asia had impinged one against another ; and the Celts, 
as the most ancient immigrants on the European continent, have 
ended by becoming its most occidental inhabitants. 

"We have been saying that the European languages of Indo-Ger- 
manie stock are referred to four families. We have already enume- 
rated the Celtic, the Indo-Germanic, and the Shlavic tongues. The 
fourth family, which may be called Pelasgic, comprehends the Greek, 
the Latin, and all the languages that have issued from them. Let 
us examine separately the characteristics of these linguistic families, 
whose destinies, posteriorly to the populations which spoke them, 
have exercised such influence upon those of humanity. 

The Greco-Latin group has received the name of Pelasgic, Greece 
and Italy having been peopled originally by a common race, the Pe- 
lasgi, whose idiom may be considered as the (souche) source of the 
Greek and the Latin. The first of these tongues is not, in fact, as 
had been formerly imagined, the "mother" of the other. They are 
simply two sisters : and if a different age is to be assigned to them, 
the Latin possesses claims to be regarded as the elder. Indeed, this 
language presents a more archaic character than the classical Greek. 
The most ancient dialect of the Hellenic idiom, that of the ^Eolians, 
resembles the Latin much more than the later dialects of Greek. 
Whilst, in this last tongue, the presence of the article announces the 
secondary period, at the same time that contractions are already nu- 
merous, the synthetical character is more pronounced in Latin ; its 
grammatical elements have not yet been separated into so many dif- 
ferent words; and the phraseology, as well as the conjugation and the 
most ancient forms of declensions, possess a striking resemblance 
to that which we encounter in the Sanscrit. The Latin vocabu- 
lary contains, over and above, a multitude of words whose archaic 
form is altogether Sanscrit. This language has moreover passed, in 
its grammatical forms and its syntax, through a series of transforma- 
tions that we can follow from the most ancient epigraphic and poeti- 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 39 

cal monuments back to the authors of the IVth and Vth century before 
our era. Latin itself was nothing more than one of the branches of 
the ancient family of Italic tongues, and which comprehended three 
branches, — the Japygian, the Etruscan, and the Italiot. These again, 
in their turn, subdivide themselves into two branches : the first con- 
stituting the Latin proper, and the second comprising the dialects of 
the Ombrians, the Marses, the Volsciaus, and the Samnites. 

"We are acquainted with the Japygian tongue solely through some 
inscriptions found in Calabria, and belonging to the Messaprine dia- 
lect. Their decipherment is as yet little advanced ; notwithstanding 
the labors that comparative philology has undertaken in these latter 
days : 7 but, what of it is understood suffices to exhibit to us an Indo- 
European tongue, which becomes recognizable in a much more certain 
manner in the inscriptions of the Italiot languages ; that is to say, of 
tongues somewhat-closely allied to the Latin, and whose forms 
approximate already, in sundry respects, more to the Sanscrit. 

The comparison of these last idioms to their Asiatic prototype per- 
mits us not merely to seize the relationship of the tribes that spoke 
them. It enables us to judge, also, of the degree of civilization which 
they had attained when they penetrated into Europe. In fact, as has 
been remarked by one of the most accomplished philologues of Ger- 
many, M. Th. Mommsen, those words that we discover at once with the 
same signification, in the different Indo-European tongues, — except, 
be it well understood, the modifications which became elaborated ac- 
cording to the inherent genius and the pronunciation of each of these 
languages — give us the measure of the social state of the emigrant 
race at the moment of its departure. ~Eow, all the names of cattle, 
of domestic animals, for ox, sheep, horse, dog, goose, 8 are the same 
in Sanscrit, in Latin, in Greek, and in German. Hence, the Indo- 
European population knew, upon entering Europe, how to rear cattle. 
We see also that they understood the art of constructing carts, yokes, 
and fixed habitations ; 9 that the use of salt 10 was common with them ; 

' See on this subject the learned works of F. G. Geotefend, entitled, — Rudimenta lingua 
Umbricce ex inscripiionibus antiquis enodala (Hanover, 1835) ; — of S. Th. Aufrecht, and A. 
Kirchhoff, Die TTmblischen Sprachdenkmdler (Berlin, 1839) ; — and of Th. Mommsen, Die Un- 
teritalischen Dialecte (Leipzig, 1850). 

8 Sanscrit gaus, Latin bos, Greek j3ots, French boivf, English beef: — Sanscrit avis, Latin 
ovis, Greek ois, English sheep : — Sanscrit cevus, Latin equus, Greek " m -os, English horse. The 
mutation of P into Q is again met with in passing from the Umbrian and the Sanscrit into 
Latin ; for example, pis for quis ; Sanscrit hansas, Latin anser, Greek ynv ; and the same for 
pecus, taurus, canis, &c. 

9 Sanscrit jugam, Latin j'ugum, Greek ?{,yov, French Jong, English yoke: — Sanscrit akshas, 
Latin axis, Greek afav whence Siia^a, French char, English car: — Sanscrit damas, Latin 
domus, Greek li^os : — Sanscrit vtcas, Latin vicus, Greek d,Ko; ; English house. 

w Sanscrit saras, Latin sal, Greek &\as, French sel, English salt. 



40 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

that they all divided the year into lunar months, and counted regu- 
larly up to more than 100, 11 according to the decimal system ; and 
that they professed a worship similar to that depicted for us in the 
Eig-veda. 

"But, as a counter-proof, — the words that we simply encounter both 
in Greek and Latin, but which do not exist in the Sanscrit in their 
proper sense, and of which only a remote etymological radical can 
be discovered, become witnesses, in their own turn, for the progres- 
sions that had been accomplished in Europe. They unfold to us 
what had been the acquirements in common, which the Pelasgi pos- 
sessed prior to their complete separation into Hellenic and into 
Italic populations. 12 We thence learn how it is that from this Pe- 
lasgic epoch dates the establishment of regular agriculture, — the 
cultivation of the cereals, of the vine and the olive. Finally, those 
words possessed by the Latin alone, but which the Greek has not 
yet acquired, display the progress accomplished by the Italic popula- 
tions after they had penetrated into the Peninsula. For instance, 
the word expressing the idea of " boat" (navis, Sanscrit nans), and 
which was subsequently applied to a " ship" (French navire, and by 
us preserved in navy, &c), belongs to the three languages as well as 
that which renders the idea of " oar." The Pelasgi had, therefore, 
imported with them from Asia, acquaintance with, transportations 
by water; but the words for sail, mast, and yard, are exclusively 
Latin. It was, consequently, the Italic people who invented (for 
themselves) navigation by sails; and this circumstance completes 
the demonstration, that it was through the north of the Italian 
peninsula that the Pelasgi must have penetrated into it. 13 

We are, unfortunately, still perplexed as to what was the precise 
idiom of these Pelasgi. It is, perhaps, in the living tongue of the 
Albanians, or Skippetars, that the least adulterated descendant of 

11 The names of numbers are the same up to a hundred, and the numeral system is iden- 
tical. 

12 [My colleague, M. Maury, writes me that his Histoire des Religions de la Grece A nlique 
(2 vols. 8vo., publishing by Ladrange, Paris), is on the point of issue — Feb. 1857. It is 
the fruit of long years of research, and cannot fail to throw great light upon ante-Hellenic 
events. In another equally - interesting field, the Melanges Hisloriques of our friend M 
Ernest Renan (now in press) will explore many points of contact, or of disunion, between 
Sanscritic and Semitic languages and history. — G. R. G.] 

13 [This interesting method of resuscitating facts long entombed in the ashes of ante- 
history, confirms the accuracy of Dr. David F. Weinland's views, "On the names of 
animals with reference to Ethnology," in a paper read before the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, last August. But I know of it only through a very condensed 
report {New York Herald, Aug. 26, 1856). — G. R. G.] 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 41 

this idiom must be sought for. 14 Notwithstanding the quantity suf- 
ficiently noteworthy of Greek and Shlavic words that has penetrated 
into the Albanian, a grammatical system, nearer to Sanscrit than the 
Greek affords, is encountered in it. Such, for example, is the de- 
clension of the determinate adjective through a pronominal appendix, 
— which is observed likewise in Sclavonic tongues, so approximate, 
on the other hand, to Sanscrit. The conjugation of the verb is very 
distinct from that in Greek, and denotes a system of flexion less 
developed. 

I shall say nothing about the neo-Latin tongues, born from the 
decomposition of Latin, and which lost little by little the synthetical 
character and the flexions of their mother. I will but remark, that 
it is very curious to establish how the languages issued from this 
stock that have been spoken by populations whose national life is 
very slightly developed, are those which present an analytical con- 
stitution the least pronounced, and wherein the flexions have not 
became so greatly impoverished. The Valaq or Roumanie, the 
Rheto-Bomain or dialect of the country of the Grisons, are certainly 
more synthetic, and grammatically less impoverished than French or 
Spanish. But, at the same time that these tongues have preserved 
their more complex character, they have become still more altered 
in respect to their vocabulary ; and one feels in them very strongly 
the influence which intermixture of races exerts upon languages ; 
otherwise called, the mingling of different tongues. The verb in the 
Hheto-Eomain, for instance, is conjugated now-a-days in the future 
tense and in the passive form like a German verb. 

The Sclavonic, or Letto-Shlave, tongues decompose themselves into 
several groups that correspond to different degrees of linguistic 
development. The Lettish group, or Lithuanian (which comprehends 
the Lithuanian, properly so called, the Borussian or ancient Prus- 
sian, and the Lettia or Livonian), answers to a period less advanced 
than the Shlavic branch; for example, the Lithuanian substantive 
has but two genders, whilst the Shlave recognizes three. The Lithu- 
anian conjugation does not distinguish the third persons of the 
singular, of the dual and the plural. The Shlavic conjugation, on the 
contrary, clearly distinguishes seven persons in the plural and in the 
singular. But, by way of amends, the Lithuanian keeps in its 
declension the seven cases and the dual, so characteristic in Sanscrit. 

14 See on this subject the Eludes Albanaises of M. J. von Hahn published at Vienna in 
1854. M. A. F. Pott has made the observation, that the Valaq idiom preserves probably 
some vestiges of this antique language of Illyria ; the use of the definite article, notably, 
seems in Wallachian to proceed from sources foreign to Latin. 



42 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

These cases are even occasionally identical with those of this last 
tongue. The Sclavonic, or Shlave, idioms properly so denominated, 
subdivide themselves into two branches, that of the south-west and 
that of the west. The first comprises the Russian, the Bulgarian which 
furnishes us with the most ancient Shlavic form (approximating very 
much to the idiom termed Cyrillic or ecclesiastical, in which are 
composed the most ancient monuments of the Christian literature of 
this race), the IUyrian, the Serle or Servian, the Croat, and the Slovine 
spoken in Carinthia, in Carniola, a part of Styria, and in a canton 
of western Hungary. The Shlavic tongues of the west embrace the 
Lekh or Polish, the Tcheq or Bohemian, the Sozab or Wendic (popu- 
lar dialect of Lusace), and the Polab, — that has disappeared like the 
ancient Prussian, and which was spoken by the Sclavonic tribes who 
of yore were spread along both banks of the lower Elbe. 

The Germanic languages attach themselves (we have already said), 
more to the Zend and the Persic than to the Sanscrit. The Persic 
and Zend are part of a group of tongues that is designated by the 
name of Iranian languages. It embraces again many other idioms, 
of which several have disappeared. To it are attached notably the 
Affghan or Pushtu, the Beloodchi spoken in Beloodckistan, the Kurd, 
the Armenian, and the Ossete — which seems to be nothing else than 
the language of those people known to the ancients by the name of 
Albanian, the Aghovans of Armenian authors. This narrow bond 
between the Germanic and the Iranian languages tells us plainly 
whence issued the populations which spread themselves over central 
Europe, and that very likely drove before them the Celts. The 
affinity that binds these Germanic tongues amongst each other, — 
that is to say, the ancient Gothic, or dialects of the German properly 
so called, to which cling the Flemish and the Dutch, the Prison and 
the Anglo-Saxon, and lastly the old Icelandic and its younger sisters 
the Danish and Swedish — is much closer than that observable between 
the Shlavic and amongst the Pelasgic languages. Eour traits in com- 
mon, as Mr. Jacob Gbjmm has noticed, attach them together, viz : 
variation of sound, which the Germans call "ablaut;" metathesis, or 
transposition ; and finally, the existence of two different forms of 
verbs and of nouns, that are denominated "strong declension or con- 
jugation," and "weak declension or conjugation." 

An attentive comparison of the laws of the Sanscrit grammar and 
vocalization, with those of German grammar and vocalization, has 
revealed some curious analogies which explain those resemblances 
that had been, even anciently, perceived between German and 
Greek. 

Celtic languages are known to us, unhappily, only through some 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 43 

doubtless very degenerate representatives of that powerful family, 
viz : the Gf-celic or Welsh, and the Armorican or Bas-breton (which are 
in reality no more than dialects of the Kimric tongue), the Irish, 
the Erse or Gadhelic idiom spread over the Scottish Highlands, and 
the Manx or idiom of the little isle of Man, — not forgetting the lost 
Cornish dialect. "We hardly know anything of the tongue spoken 
of erst by our fathers, the Gauls (G-aulois or Galls); except that the 
small number of words remaining to us suffices to classify it with the 
same family. Of all the branches of the Indo-European family this 
Celtic is, in fact, the one whose destinies have been the least happy, 
and the most confined. Its tongues have come to die along the 
shores of the Ocean that opposed an impassable barrier to renewed 
emigration of those who spoke them. Invaded by the Latin or 
German populations, the Keltic races have lost, for the most part, 
the language that distinguished them, without, on that account, 
losing altogether the imprint of their individuality. 

The history of the Indo-European languages is, therefore, the surest 
guide we can follow in endeavoring to re-construct the order of those 
migrations that have peopled Europe. This community of language 
that unveils itself beneath an apparent diversity, can it be simply the 
effect of a commonality of organization physical and intellectual? 
The inhabitants of Europe, — do they belong solely to what might 
be termed the same formation ? It would, if so, become useless to 
go searching in Asia for their common cradle. The fact is in itself 
but little verisimilar ; but, here are some comparative connections of 
another order that come to add themselves to those which languages 
have offered us, and to confirm the inductions drawn from the pre- 
ceding data. 

On studying the mythological traditions contained in the Yedas, as 
well as in the most ancient religious monuments of India and Persia, 
there has been found a multitude of fables, of beliefs, of surnames of 
gods and some sacred rites, some variants of which, slightly altered, 
are re-encountered in the legends and myths of antique Greece, of 
old Italy, of Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and even of England. 
It is only since a few years that these new analogies have been 
brought to light; and the Journal directed by two distinguished 
Orientalists of Berlin, MM. Th. Aufrecht and Adalbert Kuhn, 
has been the chief vehicle for their exposition. One of the first 
Indianists of Germany, M. Albert Weber, has also contributed his 
portion to this labor of (rapprochement) comparison ; of which, in 
France, the Baron d'Eckstein learnedly pursues the application. 

I have already said that the names of gods met with in Greek and 
Latin indicate to us a worship (culte) among the Pelasgi altogether 



44 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

similar to that of which the Big-veda is the most ancient monument. 
It cannot, of course, be expected that I should here enumerate all 
these names. I will, however, select out of their multitude, some of 
a-nature suited to cause these analogies to he understood. 

The God of Heaven (or of the sky) is called by the Greeks Zeus 
Pater ; and let us here notice that the pronunciation of Z resembles 
very much that of D, inasmuch as the word Zeus becomes in the geni- 
tive Dios. The Latins termed the same god Dies-piiter or Jupiter. 
How, in the Veda, the God of Heaven is called Dyauslipitar. The 
Greeks designated the sky as Ouranos, and invoked it as a supreme 
god. And, it must again be noted that, in their tongue, the V does 
not exist, but is always rendered by OU. In the Veda, on the other 
hand, it is termed Varouna. The Earth always receives — among 
the Greeks, the Latins, and the Germans, — the epithet of " mother ;" 
and likewise under this surname is it invoked in the Vedic hymns. 

But these are, after all, only similitudes of names : some complete 
myths connect amongst each other all the Germanic populations. 
These myths, too, have become invested, amid each one of the latter, 
with a physiognomy slightly distinct; because every thing in 
niythos is shifting and changeable : and, even among the same people, 
myths modify and transform themselves according to times and 
according to places ; but, a basis, — a substratum, of ideas in common 
remains ; and it is this residue which permits us to grasp the original 
relationship of beliefs. Well, — we might cite a host of these fables 
that have run over the whole of Europe, but ever preserving the 
same traits. I will give one of them, just by way of specimen : — 

Grecian antiquity has recorded various legends concerning a mar- 
vellous artisan yclept Aa/<5«Aos (the " inventive") who occasionally 
becomes confounded with the God of fire, personification of light- 
ning (and the thunderbolt), Hepheestos ; whom we call, after the Latins, 
Vulcan. The Aryas (proper name of those Arians who composed the 
Sanscrit Vedas) also adored, as a blacksmith-god, the personified 
thunderbolt. They termed him T-wachtrei; and the physiognomy of 
this personage possesses the greatest analogies with that of Vulcan. 
Tivaehtrei is called the "author of all works ;" because fire is the 
grand agent of human industry ; and he is Ignipotens, as says Virgil 
speaking of Vulcan. And, in the same manner that this divinity had 
forged the thunderbolt of Jupiter, and executed the cup out of which 
immortals quaffed ambrosia, Twachter' had forged the thunderbolt 
of Indra, god of the sky (or Heaven) in the Vedic pantheon ; and 
was the maker of that divine cup whence was poured out the soma, 
— which was, at one and the same time, ambrosia and the libation. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 45 

Fwachter' has for assistants, or for rivals, the Bibhavas, 15 — other 
divine artists, who play a considerable part in the songs of the Veda 
and in Hindostanic history; wherein one recognizes numberless 
traits common to the Hellenic legend of the Cyclopians, the Cabiri, 
the Telchines, and in particular to that of Daedalus. Now, these same 
legends are picked up here and there from different points of Europe, 
in localities the most distant, and between which no interchange of 
ideas could anciently have occurred. The celebrated blacksmith 
"Wieland," or Velant, so famous in the traditions of northern Ger- 
many, — who, in Scandinavia, is termed Volund — is a compound of 
Vulcan and Daedalus, no less than another heir to the Vedic tradi- 
tions about Twachter'. 

The adventure so classically-renowned of the Cretan hero, and of 
his son Icarus, reproduces itself, with but trifling variations, in that 
of Volund. He is also shut up within the labyrinth ; but Scandi- 
navian tradition no longer places in Crete (Candia) this marvellous 
edifice. It is on an island named "Savarstadr." The Greek fable 
gives to Daedalus wings, in order that he may escape from his 
prison. In the story of the people of the north, it is a shirt of 
feathers with which he clothes himself. His brother Eigil, here 
substituted for Icarus, wishes to try the power of this feathery dress ; 
and perishes like the son of Daedalus — victim of his rashness. 

A scholiast teaches us, that the celebrated Greek voyager Pytheas 
had found at the islands of ^Eolus, now the Lipari-isles, the singular 
custom of exposing, near the volcano (Stromboli) in which it was 
believed that Vulcan made his residence, the iron that one desired 
to see fashioned into some weapon or instrument. The rough metal 
was left during the night thus disposed, and upon returning on the 
morrow, the sword, or other implement, was found newly manufac- 
tured. An usage of this kind, founded upon a similar credence, is 
spread through a number of Germanic countries. It is no longer 
Vulcan, but Wieland, a cripple like him moreover, who becomes the 
mysterious blacksmith. In Berkshire (England) they used formerly 
to show, near a place called White-Horse hill, a stone, whereupon, 
according to the popular notion, it was enough to deposit a horse- 
shoe with a piece of silver, and to tie near it the animal to be shod ; 
and, on coming back, the operation was found done. The marvel- 
lous farrier Way land- Smith, as he was called, had paid himself with 
the silver money ; and the shodden brute was ready to be led away. 
In many cantons of Germany, analogous stories used to be told : only, 

15 On this point consult the learned work of M. F. Neve, entitled Essai sur U myths des 
Ribhavas, Paris, 1847. 



46 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

the name of the invisible blacksmith underwent changes, and imagi- 
nation embroidered upon the common web some particular details. 

Wieland, who is also named " Geinkensekmid," is associated in 
certain localities, with a bull ; wbich recalls to mind that one manu- 
factured by Daedalus, to satisfy the immodest passion of Pasiphae, 
the "all-illumining" spouse of Minos — whom Hellenic tradition 
makes a king of Crete, but who is encountered both amidst the 
Arians and the Germans. Among the Aryas he bears the name of 
Manou, or rather of Manus. He is a legislator-king ; having for his 
brother Yania, the god of the dead; just as Minos's brother was 
Pihadamanthus (Rhada-»iaw-thus). This last, as well as Tama, is re- 
presented with a wand in his hand, and judging in the infernal 
regions. Among the Germans, Manus is called Mannus. He is 
also (a man and) an ancient king, who, like the Indian Manus, is an 
Adam, the first author of mankind. 

I must refer to the learned work of M. A. Kuhn those who wish 
to penetrate deeper into these curious comparisons. The glimpse I 
have just given, shows how much of authority they add to those 
analogies that the comparative study of languages has furnished us. 
Our German philologists have felt this, inasmuch as they insert, in 
the same periodical repertory, mythological researches of this kind, 
purely linguistic. I would add, that such comparative examinations 
enable us to comprehend better the nature and the history of the 
Hellenic religion in particular, and the religions of antiquity in 
general. This method yields us the key to a multitude of myths 
which we could not decipher did we not mount up to their Asiatic 
origines. Allow me yet again to offer a short example. 

According to the Grecian fable, Aomon was the father of Ouranos. 
The motive for this filiation had not until now been pierced through. 
"Why should the most ancient of the gods, their supreme father, 
have had an "anvil" for his own father? such being the Greek 
signification of this word. Sanscrit can alone tell us, — as M. R. 
Eoth, one of the most ingenious and skilful Orientalists of Germany, 
has remarked. The Sanscrit form of this Greek name is Agman, 
and the word signifies, at one and the same time, "anvil" and "sky" 
(or heaven). The myth becomes intelligible. Here, as in innumer- 
able other cases, the god receives for his progenitor another personi- 
fication, from the same part of nature that he represents. And, in 
the same manner that Rhea has engendered Demeter, — that is to say, 
the "mother-earth," because Rhea (as the meaning of her name 
indicates) is a personification of the Earth ; so, likewise, as Helios 
(the sun) had for his father Hyperion, that is to say, again the sun, — 
did Ouranos (the sky) receive birth from Acmon, — whose name 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 47 

has the same acceptation. But, whilst the word Acmon passed into 
Greek with the sense of " hammer," — against which that of " anvil" 
was easily interchangeable — it lost, among the Hellenes, the meaning 
of " sky," and thus the myth, transported into Europe, ceased to 
possess significance any more. 

In the presence of analogies and connections so conclusive, it is 
impossible to suppose simply that a population of the same race, and 
with the same fundamental stock of language, was spread from India 
and Persia to Britain and Erin : we must necessarily suppose that the 
peoples coming from Asia had imported into Europe their idiom and 
their traditions. Must it hence be admitted that this portion of the 
earth had not then been already populated ; and that those Asiatic 
tribes, which took the leadership of this long defile of conquerors, 
found nothing before them but solitudes ? 

It is again the study of languages that will furnish us with the 
reply. 

I have stated that all the idioms of Europe belong to the Indo- 
European stem ; three groups (or if you will, three languages), form- 
ing the only exception ; without speaking, be it well understood, of 
the Turkish, scarcely implanted on this side of the Bosphorus, and 
whose introduction dates but from a few centuries ; nor comprising, 
either, the Maltese, — solitary vestige of Saracenic dominion in Italian 
lands. 

The first group is represented by the Basque tongue, or the Eiskari, 
which embraces but two dialects. The second is the Finnish group, 
comprising the Lapponic, the Einnic or Suomi, and the Esihonian 
spoken in the northern part of Livonia, as also at the islands of (Esil 
and Dago. Lastly, the third group reduces itself to the Magyar, or 
Hungarian, which links itself to the Finnish group through an indi- 
rect relationship. 

"We know how the Magyar introduced itself into Europe. It is 
the tongue of the ancient Huns, who, mingling with the populations 
of Dacia and Pannonia, gave birth to the Hungarians ; but we are 
less advanced as regards what concerns the history of the Finnish 
and the Basque languages. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt, who devoted himself to researches of 
great interest upon the Basque tongue, has shown that this language 
had of yore a much more extensive domain than the little corner of 
land by which it is now confined. Names of places belonging to 
the whole of southern France, and even to Liguria, prove that a 
population of Euscarian idiom was anciently spread from the Alps 
to the occidental extremity of Spain. These people were the Iberes, 
Iberians, yonderers ; and the Basque is the last relic of their tongue. 



48 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

The labors of the skilful philologue of Beziers, M. Boudakd, have 
put the finishing stroke in bringing this fact to light. 

The Celts, or Kelts, encountered before them, therefore, the Iberes ; 
whom they pushed onward into the south of Gaul, where we find 
them established in the time of Caesar. They amalgamated with 
them, as the name of Celt-Iberia teaches ; and very certainly in Lan- 
guedoc also, no less than in Aquitania. These Iberians — a nation 
lively and impressionable, vain and stirring — may well have infused 
into the Keltic blood that element of restlessness and levity which 
one perceives in the Gauls, but which is alien, on the contrary, to 
the true Kelt, — at once so attached to his traditions, and ever so 
headstrong in his ideas. 

The Basque tongue, otherwise called Iberian, resembles in nothing 
the Indo-European idioms. It is "par excellence" a polysynthetical 
language, — a tongue that, in its organism, reminds one, in a suffi- 
ciently-striking manner, of the languages of America. It composes " de 
toutes pieces" the idea-ivord; suppresses often entire syllables; and, in 
this work of composition, preserving sometimes but a single letter of 
the primitive word, it presents those adjunctive particles that by phi- 
lologists are termed postpositions — as opposed to prepositions — which 
serve to distinguish cases. In this manner is it that the Basque 
constructs its declension. This new characteristic re-appears in 
another great family of languages which we shall discuss anon, viz : 
the Tartar tongues belonging to central Asia. 

The Basque, consequently, denotes a very primitive intellectual 
state of the people who occupied western Europe previously to the 
arrival of the Indo-Europeans ; and, were it allowable to draw an 
induction from an isolate characteristic, one might suppose that the 
Iberes were, as a race, allied to the Tartar. 

But this hypothesis, daring as it is, receives a new degree of 
probability from the study of the second group of European lan- 
guages, foreign to the Indo-Germanic source, viz : the Finnish group. 

This group is not restricted to a few idioms on the north-east of 
Europe. It extends itself over all the territory of northern Russia 
even to the extremity of Kamtsehatka. Comparison of the numerous 
idioms spoken by tribes spread over Siberia has revealed a common 
bond between them, as well of grammar as of vocabulary. These 
tongues, which might be comprehended under the general appellation 
of Finno- Japonic (from the name of those occupying upon the map the 
two extremes of their chain), offer this same characteristic of agglutina- 
tion that has just been signalized in the Basque ; but in a much less 
degree. They make use of that curious S} r stem of postpositions 
which appertains also to the ancient idiom of the Iberes. Those ter- 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 49 

urinations destined to represent cases are replaced by prepositions 
distinct from the word, — which, in our languages, precede, on the 
contrary, the words of which they modify the case. It must be 
noted that the apparition of these postpositions invariably antecedes, 
in the gradual formation of tongues, the employment of cases ; 
whereas, prepositions replace these when the tongue becomes altered 
and simplified. Cases are nothing, indeed, but the result of the 
coupling of the postposition to words. The organic march of the 
declension presents itself, therefore, throughout the evolution of lan- 
guages, in the following manner, viz : at first the root (or radical), 
ordinarily monosyllabic ; next, the radical followed by postpositions, 
— corresponding to the period of agglutination; again, the radical 
submitted to the flexion, — corresponding to the ancient period of our 
Indo-European tongues ; and, finally, the preposition followed by the 
radical, — corresponsive to the modern period of these same lan- 
guages. It is to be noted that the postposition (in relative age) 
never returns subsequently to the preposition, — any more than can 
the milk-teeth grow again in an old man after the loss of his molars. 

Thus, then, the age of the Finnish tongues and of the Basque is 
fixed. They were idioms of analogous organization, and of which 
the arrest of development announces a sufficiently feeble degree of 
intellectual power. 16 The brethren of the Aryas and Iranians, upon 
penetrating into Europe, had only, therefore, to combat populations 
living in a state analogous to that in which we find the hordes of 
Siberia, — species of Ostiaks or of Vogouls, of Tcheremiss or of Mord- 
vines. "With their intellectual superiority, the people coming from 
occidental Asia had no need of being very numerous to vanquish 
such barbarous tribes ; with whom, doubtless, they frequently amal- 
gamated, but of whom they ever constituted the aristocracy. This 
warrior and haughty spirit of those Asiatic conquerors preserved 
itself above all among the Germans, and it is to be perceived also 
amid the Latins and the Greeks. 

Let it not, however, be imagined that, beneath the influence of the 
neighborhood which new migrations created for them, such tribes 
of Finnish stock thrown off to the north-east of Europe, and those 

16 The study of the vocabulary of the Finnish tongues, and even that of the Tartarian, 
proves to us that those populations were wanting in a quantity of knowledge that we find, 
from the very beginning, amidst the Indo-European populations, and which the former were 
afterwards forced to borrow from the latter. For example, the name of salt, in all the 
idioms of that family as well as in Hungarian, expressed by a derivative of the Sanscrit, 
Greek, or Latin name. Indeed, it is certain that the use of salt remained for a long time 
unknown to the inhabitants of Northern Europe ; and that Christian II, king of Denmark, 
had gained over the Swedish peasants by bringing to them this precious condiment. 

4 



50 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

Iberian peoples repulsed to the south-west, have remained absolutely 
stationary. Their languages tell us the contrary ; because these lan- 
guages have improved : but such perfectioning has not been able to 
step beyond certain bounds. The Finnic spoken in Finland, for in- 
stance, has drawn nearer to tongues a flexions (with flexions) ; but 
never has it been able to attain that degree of force, of clearness and 
energy, which makes the merit of our Indo-European idioms. 

As concerns sounds, notwithstanding their homogeneity, the Fin- 
nish tongues, — or, to qualify them more exactly, the Ougro-Tartar 
languages — vary considerably. There are some very soft ones, like 
the Suomi or Finlandish ; and some very harsh, like the Magyar ; 
but a principle of harmony dominates them. This principle is 
especially perceptible in the Suomi. Indeed, this idiom seeks above 
all for sweetness and euphony. It avoids, in consequence, mono- 
syllabic radicals, and nearly always attaches to the root a final vowel 
that bears no accent. Hence M. Schleicher has remarked how this 
gives to the words of this tongue the measure of a "trochee." 17 

We meet again with this harmonic tendency equally in the Tartar 
tongues, which the "ensemble" of their characteristics and words 
attaches also as closely to the Ougro-Japonic languages, as the Tartar 
type attaches itself to the Finnish, or Ougrian, through the interme- 
diacy of the Tungouse type. The separation is not more decided 
(tranoMe) between the races of Siberia and those of central Asia, 
than between the idioms which they speak. The Mongol, the Mand- 
ohou, the Ouigour, the Turkish, are not fundamentally distinct from 
the Finnish tongues ; and this explains why some philologers had 
been struck with the resemblance between Turkish and Hungarian. 
"We are here referring to the primitive Turkish, to that which was 
spoken in Turkestan, and of which some dialects yet subsist in cer- 
tain parts of Russia and of Tartary ; because, as to that which is now 
European Turkish, it is altered almost as much as the Turkish blood 
itself. It is imbued with Arabic and Persian words ; it has become 
singularly softened down : in the same manner that the Asiatic 
Turks, by dint of crossing themselves through marriage with Georgian 
girls, with Greek, Arab, Persian (occasionally with an Abyssinian 
or negress), Sclavonian and other women, have ended by taking a 
physiognomy altogether different from that of their ancient progeni- 
tors, — which has been gaining in nobleness and regularity what it 
loses in singularity. European blood has so well infiltrated itself 
into that of the Hunnic hordes which conquered the country situate 
between the Danube and the Theis, that it is now-a-days impossible 

B The Greeks and the Latins called trochee a foot composed of along and a short syllable. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 51 

to descry any more of the Mongol, anything of that hideousness bo 
celebrated among the Huns, in the expressive traits of the present 
Magyar. 

One may, then, designate this vast family of languages under the 
denomination of Ougro- Tartar. All of them, at divers degrees, are 
subject in their words to the law of euphonic transformations of vow- 
els in the particles suffixed, that is to say, joined on at the ends of 
words. In order that nothing should come to injure the clearness 
of the radical's pronunciation, everything is combined so that its 
vowel remains immutable ; and hence, accordingly as this vowel is 
hard, soft, or intermediary, the vowels of the suffixes are submitted 
to modifications having for object to prevent the asperity or the 
heaviness of the latters' sound from smothering the sound of the 
radical. This law, so remarkable, is precisely the reverse of what 
happens in languages a flexions (with flexions), for the case ; because 
in them it is the suffixes that act upon and influence the vowels of 
the radical. 

All these tongues proceed equally through the path of agglutina- 
tion. The radical is, indeed, at bottom monosyllabic. Its almost con- 
stant junction to a particle-suffix makes it, in reality, a dissyllable, 
whose monosyllabic origin is nevertheless recalled by the presence 
of the accent upon the first syllable. Never does the radical suffer 
any foreign syllables to place themselves at its head (or commence- 
ment) ; and we still behold in Magyar how, notwithstanding that it 
has largely undergone the influence of the Indo-European tongues by 
which it is surrounded — as in Finnish, as in Turkish, as in Mongol, — a 
word can never begin with two consonants ; and lastly, the generical 
employment of the postposition to designate the relations of the 
substantive. The number of these postpositions varies according to 
the development and the richness of the tongue. In Suomi, for 
example, the adjunctive particles are very numerous, not less than 
fifteen being counted, which makes in reality fifteen cases ; without 
including the nominative, that forms itself without suffix : and still, 
notwithstanding, the Finnish does not recognize the distinction of 
one of the most natural cases, viz : the accusative, which it renders 
through indirect cases. 

The whole of these languages, maugre their apparatus of forms, 
are nevertheless poor. It is clear that this heap of postpositions results, 
in reality, from a powerlessness of the mind to reduce to simple and 
regular expressions the relations of words betwixt each other. We 
must not, therefore, wonder at finding, in the Ougro-Tartar tongues, 
almost always the same terminations, as well in the plural as in the 
singular. 



52 ON THE DISTKIBTTTION AND 

One may partition, according to their degree of development, these 
tongues into four groups, — the Ougrian group, that comprises the 
Ostiak, the Samoyede, the Vogoul, and divers other dialects of Sibe- 
ria : the Tartar group properly so called, which comprehends the 
Mongol that occupies in it the lower rung, the Ou'igour, the Mand- 
chou, and the Turkish, whose position is on the highest : the Japonic 
group, to which belongs the Corean ; and the Finno-Ougrian, that 
embraces the Suomi or Einlandic, the Esthonian, the Lapponic, and 
the Magyar ; all which latter tongues are superior to those of the pre- 
ceding groups, as concerns the grammatical system and ideology. 

The Finno-Ougrian family prolongs itself into North America, 
where we encounter its most widely-spread branches in the most 
boreal latitudes. And in like manner it is to be noted, that the Es- 
kimaux race, and the septs thinly scattered over those frozen coun- 
tries, approximate in their type to that of the Ougrian. 

The idioms spoken in the entire sub-Arctic region present the 
same uniformity, therefore, as the fauna of this region. 18 Indeed, we 
know that animal species are found to be very nearly the same along 
the boreal latitudes both of the Old and the ISTew world. 

Whilst one body of the great Indo-European migration from Asia 
was advancing by detachments into our temperate countries, another 
corps descended through the defiles of the Hindoo-Kosh, and by the 
basin of the Indus, into the vast plain of the Ganges ; and spread 
itself bit by bit over the whole peninsula, of which this river laves the 
northern provinces. This is what we are taught not merely by the 
traditions of the Hindoos, but also by the study of the languages 
spoken in this peninsula. In fact, while we encounter, at the north 
of Hindostan, idioms emanating from the Sanscrit family, we meet, 
further to the south, with an " ensemble " of tongues, absolutely 
foreign to it, as well in vocabulary as in grammar. 

These languages appertain all to the same family, and they are 
denominated, after the Hindoos, by the epithet of Dravirian or Dra- 
vidian. Hence, the Arian tribes had been preceded in India by popu- 
lations of a wholly distinct family ; in the same manner- that the 
sisters of the former had encountered in Europe another race, differ- 
ent likewise from themselves. And, what is remarkable, the two 
categories of languages spoken by the autochthones of Europe and 
the indigenous peoples of Hindostan belong, in classification, to lin- 
guistic families having many traits in common. 

The Dravidian tongues subdivide themselves into two groups ; one 

18 Agassiz, " Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World, and their relation to 
the different Types of Man" — in Nott and Ghddon's Types of Mankind, 7th edition, 1856, 
pp. lx. — xiii. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 53 

the northern, and the other southern. The first embraces the lan- 
guages spoken by the dispersed native tribes, whom the descendants 
of the invading Aryas have repelled into the Vindhya mountains, 
viz : the Male or Radjmahali, the Uraon, the Cole, and the Khond 
or Gonde. The second comprises the Tamoul or Tamil, the Telougou 
or Telenga (called also Kalinga), tbe Talava, the Malayalam, and the 
Carnatic or Carnataka. As the populations at the south of the penin- 
sula bave preserved, during a longer time, their national indepen- 
dence, and even have attained a civilization of their own, one can 
understand that the idioms of the southern group must be far richer 
and more developed than those of the northern group. Nevertheless, 
despite this inequality of development, one discovers, in a striking 
manner, the same characteristics in the whole of these tongues. 
Another branch of the same family, which extends to the north-east 
of the basin of the Ganges, indicates to us through its presence, that 
a fraction of the indigenous population was thrown towards the 
north-east ; so that, it must now be admitted, the great Dravidian 
nation, cut through its centre (by the intrusive Aryas), was, like the 
primitive population of Europe, driven off to the two opposite extre- 
mities of its vast territory. The Bodo and the Dhimal are the two 
principal representatives of this cluster separated from the stem, 
whose most advanced branches continue onward until they lose them- 
selves in Assam. 

All the characters appertaining to the Ougro-Japonic tongues are 
found again in these Dravidian languages, of which the Gonde may 
be considered to have preserved to us their more ancient forms. All 
manifest in a high degree the tendency to agglutination. The law 
of harmony, that we have perceived just now in the Finnish lan- 
guages, re-appears here with the same character. Tbe foundations of 
the grammatical system, which are identical in all these tongues, 
doubtless constitute them as separate families from Tartarian ; but this 
(Dravidian) family is very close, certainly, to those idioms spoken by 
the Tartars. The same contrasts exist, as regards the vocalization, 
between the Ougro-Japonic and the Dravidian tongues. The Mag- 
yar may be compared to that Dravidian idiom richest in consonants, 
— for example, to the Toda or Todara, which is spoken by an ancient 
aboriginal tribe established in the Nilgherri-hills ; and the Finnish, 
with the Japonic, correspond in their softness to the Telougou talked 
at the south-east of Hindostan. 

These Dravidian populations were spread even to the islands of 
Ceylon, the Maldives and the Laquedives ; inasmuch as the idioms 
there still spoken attach themselves also to the Dravidian group. 

Comparative philology demonstrates to us, therefore, that a popu- 



54 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

lation in race very approximate to the Tartar, and which was, con- 
sequently, itself allied to the Finnish race, did precede the Aryas in 
old Hindostan. 

One must not judge of the intellectual and social condition of 
these ahorigines from the literary movement that has heen wrought 
in the hody of the Tamoul, which was the counterblast of that grand 
intellectual movement represented to us by the Sanscrit, and was 
certainly due to the Aryan influence. In order to judge what these 
primitive populations of Hindostan had been, one must go and study 
their scattered remains. This has been done, quite in recent times, 
by the English, to whom we owe some most interesting details about 
these antique tribes. These debris of primeval Indian nationality are 
now distributed in three distinct parts of the peninsula. The first 
are met with in the heart of the Mahanuddy, as far as Cape Comorin ; 
being the Bheels, the Tudas, the Meras, the Coles, the Gondes or 
Khonds, the Soorahs, the Paharias, &c. The second inhabit the 
northern section towards the Himalaya; such are the Radjis or 
Doms, and the Brahouis. The third occupy the angle that sepa- 
rates the two peninsulas of India, and which is designated by the 
name of Assam, as well as that mountainous band constituting the 
frontier between Bengal and Thibet. 

The whole of these tribes live even now as they lived very many 
centuries ago. They are agricultural populations, who, from time to 
time, clear with fire a portion of the jungle or the forest. The word 
which, amongst these people, renders the idea of culture, signifies 
nothing else than the cutting down of the forest. The Aryas, on the 
contrary, were a pastoral people ; and in India, as in many other 
countries, the shepherds triumphed over the farmers. Everything, 
furthermore, announces among these Dravidian people much gentle- 
ness of character, which is again a distinctive trait of the Mongols 
and of the Finnish populations. Their worship must have been 
that naturalistic fetishism which remains the religion of the Bodos, 
the Dhimals, and the Gondes. They adored objects of nature. They 
had deities that presided over the different classes of beings and the 
principal acts of life ; and they knew naught of sacerdotal castes 
or of any other regular organization of worship. Some usages, 
preserved even at this day among several of these indigenous tribes, 
show us that woman, at least the wife, enjoyed among them a very 
great degree of independence. 

The facts accord, then, with linguistics to show us how, within 
that portion of Asia comprehended between the Euphrates and 
Tigris, and the Indus, there had existed a more intelligent and 
stronger race, that, at a very early day, divided itself into two 



CLASSIFICATION" OF TONGUES. 55 

branches, of which one marched into Europe, and the other into 
Hindostan ; both encountering, in each new country, some popula- 
lations of analogous race, and possibly allied, whom they subju- 
gated, and of whom they became the superior caste — the aristocracy. 
The two inferior castes of India, the Vaisyas and the Soudras, are 
but the descendants of such vanquished nations, — the anterior type 
of India's autochthones being even yet represented in a purer state 
by some of the Dravidian "hill-tribes" above described. 

But, alongside of this grand and powerful race of Aryas and 
Iranians, there appears, from the very remotest antiquity, another 
race, whose territorial conquests were to be less extended and less 
durable, but of whom the destinies have been glorious also. It is the 
Semitic (Shemitic, Shemitish) or Syro-Arabian race. From the banks 
of the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean, and to the 
extremity of the Arabic peninsula, this race was expanding itself. 
Its great homogeneity springs from the close bonds which combine 
together the different dialects of its tongue. These dialects are the 
Aramsean, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Chaldasan and the Ethiopic. 

By their constitution, all these idioms distinguish themselves 
sharply from the Indo-European languages. They possess neither 
the same grammatical system, nor the same verbal roots. In Se- 
mitic languages, the roots are nearly always dissyllabic ; or, to speak 
with philologists, triliteral, that is to say, formed of three letters : and 
these letters are consonants ; because, one of the most distinctive 
characteristics of the Semitic tongues is, that the vowel does not 
constitute the fundamental sound in a word. Here vowels are 
vague, or, to describe them otherwise, they have not any settled 
fixed-sound, distinct from the consonant. They become inserted, or 
rather, they insinuate themselves between strong and rough conso- 
nants. Nothing of that law of harmony of the Ougro-Tartar or 
Dravidian tongues, nothing of that sonorousness of Sanscrit, of Greek, 
and neo-Latin languages, — exists in the Semitic. Man speaks in 
them by short words, more or less jerked forth. The process of 
agglutination survives in them still; not, however, completely, as 
in the Basque. There are many flexions in them, but these flexions 
do not constitute the interior of words. 

Since the publication of M. Ernest Kenan's great labors upon the 
history of Semitic languages, we are made perfectly acquainted with 
the phases through which these languages have passed. 

They have had, likewise, their own mould, which they have been 
unable to break, even while modifying themselves. The Rabbinical, 
the "ISTahwee" or literal Arabic, in aspiring to become languages 
more analytical than the Ohaldee or the Hebrew, have remained, not- 



56 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

withstanding, imprisoned within the narrow hars of an imperfect 
grammar. This is the reason, as M. Ernest Eenan has remarked, 
that, — whilst the Indo-European tongues continue still their life 
in our day, as in past times, upon all points of the globe — Semitic 
languages, on the contrary, have run through the entire circle of 
their existence. But, in the more circumscribed course of their life, 
they have presented the same diversities of development established 
for all the preceding families ; and, at the same time that the Ara- 
maean which comprises two dialects, — the pagan Aramaean or Sabian, 
and the Christian Aramaean or Syriac — is poor, without harmony, 
without multiplied forms, ponderous in its constructions, and devoid 
of aptitude for poetry, the Arabic, on the contrary, distinguishes 
itself by an incredible richness. 

The Semitic race, of which the birth-place must be sought in 
that peninsular space shut in, at the north by the mountains of 
Armenia, and at the east by those which bound the basin of the Tigris, 
has not gone outside of its primitive father-land. It has only travelled 
along the borders of the Mediterranean, as is proved to us by the 
incontestable Semiticism of the Phoenician tongue, whose inscriptions 
show it to have been very close to the Hebrew. Africa has been 
almost the only field for its conquests. Phoenician colonies bore a 
Semitic idiom into the country of the ISTumidians and the Mauri; 
later again, the Saracenic invasion carried Arabic — another tongue 
of the same family — into the place of the Punic, which last the Latin 
had almost dispossessed. In Abyssinia, the G-heez or Ethiopic does 
not appear to be of very ancient introduction, and everything leads 
to the belief that it was carried across the Red Sea by the Joktanide 
Arabs, or Himyarites, whose language, now forgotten, has left some 
monuments of its existence, down to the time of the first Khalifates, 
in divers inscriptions. 

The Semites found in Africa upon their arrival a strong popula- 
tion, that for a long period opposed itself to their conquests. This 
population was that of the Egyptians ; whose language now issues gra- 
dually from the deciphering of the hieroglyphics, and which left, as 
its last heir, the Coptic, still living in manuscripts that we collect 
with avidity. 

This Egyptian was not, however, an isolated tongue. The Berber 
— otherwise miscalled the "Kabyle," which name in Arabic only 
means "tribe," — studied of late, has caused us to find many conge- 
ner words and " tournures." And this Berber (whence Barbary) itself, 
yet spoken by the populations Amazirg, Shillouh, and Tuareg, was 
expelled or dominated by the Arabic. Its domain of yore extended 
even to the Canary-isles. Some idioms formerly spoken in the north 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 57 

of Africa attached themselves to it through, bonds of relationship 
more or less close. The presence, throughout the north of Africa, 
of inscriptions in characters called Tifnag, and which seem to have 
been conceived in Berber language, makes known to us that this 
tongue must have reigned over all the territories of the Barbaresque 
States ; and was most probably that of the JSTumidians, Gsetulians, and 
Garamantes. 

Egyptian civilization was very profuse in aspirates. Its gramma- 
tical forms denote a more advanced period than that of the Semitic 
tongues : its verb counts a great number of tenses and moods, formed 
through the addition of prefixes or of suffixes. But its pronoun and 
its article have still an entirely Semitic physiognomy, notwithstand- 
ing that the stock of its vocabulary is absolutely foreign to that of 
those languages. 

We have already caused it to be remarked that, in the Galla (of 
Abyssinia) one re-encounters the Semitic pronoun. The influence 
exerted at the beginning by the Semites over the race to which the 
Egyptians were proximate — and whom we will call, with the Bible, 
Hamitic — was, therefore, in all likelihood, very profound. When 
the Semites entered into relations with the Hamites, the language of 
the latter must have been yet in that primitive stage in which essential 
grammatical forms might still be borrowed from foreign tongues. 
An intermixture sufficiently intimate must have occurred between 
the two races ; above all in the countries bordering upon the two 
territories. Such is what occurred certainly for the Phoenicians, 
whose tongue was Semitic, whilst the stock of population belonged, 
nevertheless, to the Hamitic race. For Genesis gives Canaan as the 
son of Ham ; and Phoenicia, as every one knows, is " the land of Ca- 
naan." The whole oriental region of Africa as far as the Mozam- 
bique coast affords numerous traces of Semitic influence. Along- 
side of the Gheez, that represents to us, as E. Penan judiciously 
writes it, the classical form of the idiom of the Semites in Abyssinia, 
several dialects equally Semitic arrange themselves ; but all more or 
less altered, either by the admixture of foreign words, or through the 
absence of literary culture. Amid these must be placed the Amhario, 
the modern language of Abyssinia. 

Semitic tongues underwent, in Africa, the influence of the lan- 
guages of that part of the world ; and, in particular, of those of the 
Hamitic family, spoken in the countries limitrophic to that inha- 
bited by the Semites. 

African languages cannot all be referred to the same family : but 
they possess among themselves sundry points of resemblance. They 
constitute, as it were, a vast group, whence detaches itself a family 



58 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

that may be called the African family " par excellence," and which 
extends from the Occidental to the Oriental coasts, re-descending 
even into the Austral portion. 

All the languages that form part of this group, and in general the 
tongues of the whole of this portion of the globe, possess one system 
of vocalization, otherwise termed, a powerful phonology; and some- 
times even a disposition almost rhythmical, which gained for them, on 
the part of some philologists, the name of alliteral tongues. Thus, 
although the consonants in them be often aspirated, and affect odd pro- 
nunciations, they are never accumulated together. Double letters are 
rare, and in certain tongues unknown. For example, in Oaffr, the 
vowels have a pronunciation clear and precise. In the major number 
of the languages of Southern Africa, and in some few of those of Cen- 
tral Africa, the words always terminate with vowels, and present regu- 
lar alternations of vowels and consonants. This is above all true of the 
Caffrarian languages. 19 M. d'Avezac writes about the Yebou, or Ebo, 
tongue spoken in Guinea : in regard to euphony, this language may 
be considered as one of the softest in the world ; vowels abound in 
it ; and it is in this respect remarkable that (except, perhaps, some 
rare and doubtful exceptions) not merely all the words, but even all 
the syllables end in vowels : the consonants offer no roughness in 
their pronunciation ; and many are articulated with a sort of quaint- 
ness (mignardise), which renders it difficult to seize them, and still 
more difficult to express graphically by the letters of our alphabet. 20 
Among some other African tongues, on the contrary, the termination 
is ordinarily nasal. Amid the majority of the languages of northern 
and midland Africa, the words finish with a vowel. Such is what one 
observes in the Woloe, the Bulom, the Temmani, the Tousnali, and the 
Fasoql. 

As concerns the system proper of sounds, and the vocabulary, 
they vary greatly in African languages : and the harmony, sonorous- 
ness, and fluidity of speech, frequently meet, in certain sounds, with 
notable exceptions. It is the character of these various sounds that 
may serve as a basis for the classification of the tongues of Africa. 
All present compound vowels and consonants ; amongst which, m p, 
m b, are of the frequentest employment. The duplex consonants 
n k,n d, appear likewise. Finally, in some African idioms, one en- 
counters the consonants dg, gb, Jcb, bp, bm, Tee, Jch, rh, pmb, b lm.™ 

19 See on this subject The Kafir Language; comprising a sketch of its history, by the Bev. 
John W. Appleyard (King William's Town, 1850), p. 65 seqq. 

20 Memoires de la Sociele Bthnologique de Paris, ii. part 2, p. 50. 

21 In these illustrative notations no attempt is made, of course, to follow any of the 
diversified "standard alphabets" recently devised for the use of Missionaries. On this 
question of the expediency of such alphabets, and their success so far, I coincide entirely 
■with the criticism of a very scientific friend, Prof. S. S. Haldeman {Report on the Present 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 59 

Aspirates and the sibilants are not rare, any more than the vise, 
simple or compound, of the iv . Among some languages of this 
family, the palatal and dental letters are confounded, or at least are 
not clearly distinguishable. Several tongues are completely devoid 
of certain letters : for instance, the Qdji, and divers others, are want- 
ing in the letter I; and replace it, whenever they meet with it in what 
foreign words they may appropriate, by r, or d, or n. 

The accordances, of different parts of the discourse, are often 
regulated by a euphonic system which is felt very strongly in sundry 
idioms, notably in the Yazouba. The radicals are more frequently 
monosyllabic. It is the addition of this radical with a modifying 
particle (which is most commonly a prefix) that gives birth to the 
other words. The relations of cause, of power, of reciprocity, of re- 
flectivity, of agent, &c, as well as those of time, number, and sex, are 
always expressed through a similar system. The radicals, thus united 
to formative particles, become, in their turn, veritable roots, and con- 
stitute the source (souche) of new words. One can comprehend, never- 
theless, how very imperfect is such a system, for defining clearly the 
relations, at once so multiplied and so distinct, existing between 
words. There exist above all some for which African languages 
are of extreme poverty; for example, the ideas of time and motion. 
And this character approximates them, in a manner rather striking, 
to the Semitic tongues. As in these latter idioms, African languages 
do not distinguish the present from the future, or the future from 
the past : otherwise, they express both these tenses by one and the 
same particle. The penury and the vagueness of particles indica- 
tive of the prepositions, — or to speak with grammarians, of the pre- 
fixes to prepositions — are again far more pronounced in the majority 
of African idioms than amidst the Semitic. They enunciate, by the 
same particle, ideas as different as those of movement towards a 

State of our knowledge of Linguistic Ethnology, made to the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, Aug. 1856). My experiences of the hopelessness of arriving at 
any exact countervails in European characters for Arabic intonations alone, so as to 
enable a foreigner, who has not heard Arabs speak, even to pronounce correctly, render me 
very sceptical as to the ultimate possibility of transcribing, through any one series of 
Alphabetic signs, the infinitude of distinct vocalizations uttered by the diverse groups of 
human types; which articulations, as Prof. Agassiz has so well remarked, take their 
original departure from the different conformations of the throat inherent in the race-cha- 
racter of each distinct group of mankind. 

Should any one, however, desire to put this universal " Missionary Alphabet" through 
an experimentum crucis, he need not travel far to test its applicability to remote, abnormal, and 
barbarous tongues, by trying its efficacy upon three cognate languages close at hand. Let 
a Frenchman, wholly unacquainted with English, transcribe into the " Missionary Alpha- 
bet," a short discourse as he hears it from the mouth of a Londoner. Then, pass his manu- 
script on to a German (of 'course knowing neither French nor English), and let him read it 
aloud to an Englishman. " Le diable mime ne s'y reconnaitrait pas !'■' — G. R. G.] 



60 ON" THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

point, or the departing from a point ; of position in a place, toward 
a place, or near a place. The same poverty is observable in the 
conjunctions : copulative particles being employed frequently to 
render the idea of possession and of relationship ; those which ex- 
press the idea of connexion being often replaced by pronouns or by 
definite particles. 

Per contra, African languages, as well as the Semitic, are ex- 
tremely rich in respect to the changes (voies) of the verb, that is to say, 
in forms indicating the manner in which a verb may be employed. 
These changes — which are so numerous, notably in Arabic — are not the 
less so in the majority of African languages; beyond all, in the princi- 
pal group that extends from the Mozambique coast to Caffraria on one 
side, and to Congo on the other. Although these changes are com- 
posed, in the major portion of such tongues, by the addition of pre- 
fixes, they form themselves in others through the aid of suffixes. 

The number of these changes varies singularly according to the 
tongues. Thus, in the Sechuana language, and in the Temneh, there 
exist six changes ; in the Sooaheeli seven, in the Caffr eight, and in 
the Mpongwee eleven. 

To give an idea of the opulence of these changes in a single verb, 
we borrow an illustration from the language of Congo. Sal a, to 
labor; s alii a, to facilitate labor ; salisia, to labor with somebody ; 
salanga, to be in the habit of laboring ; salisionia, to labor the one 
for another; sal any an a, to be skilful at laboring. 

All verbal roots are susceptible of similar modifications through 
the help of certain particles that may be added to them. In this 
method, by the sole use of the verb, an expression is attained indicating 
whether the action be rare, frequent, difficult, easy, excessive, &c. And 
this richness of changes does not prevent the language froni being, 
as regards its verbs, and viewed in respect to their number, of great 
poorness. For instance, — the idiom of Congo, from which we have 
just borrowed the proof of such a great richness of changes, does not 
possess any word to express the idea of "living," but is obliged to 
say in place, to conduct ones soul, or being in one's heart. 

Another very characteristic trait of the majority of African 
tongues is, that they do not recognize the distinction of genders, 
after the manner of the Semitic idioms or the Indo-European. They 
distinguish, on the contrary, as two genders, the animate and the in- 
animate ; and in the class of animate beings, the gender man or in- 
telligent, and the gender brute or animal. Others of these languages, 
in lieu of distinguishing numbers after the fashion of Indo-European 
and Semitic- idioms, recognize only a collective form which takes no 
heed of genders, and a plural form that applies itself to beings of the 



CLASSIFICATION" OF TONGUES. 61 

same genders. This is a particularity that we shall again encounter 
in the clicking languages, or the Hottentot. 

We do not possess sufficient elements as yet to give a complete 
classification of the languages of Africa. It is only since the recent 
publication of the Polyglotta Africana of Mr. S. W. Koelle that we 
have acquired an idea of the reciprocal affinities which link together 
the tongues of Western Africa. 

The classification proposed, however, by Koelle is freely intro- 
duced into the following schedule. 

I. — ATLANTIC languages, or of the north-west of Africa. 

These tongues have, with those of southern Africa, for a 
common characteristic, the mutation of prefixes. They 
comprise the following groups, viz : 

1st. — The Fouloup group, which embraces the Fouloup or 
Floupe, properly so called, spoken in the country of the 
same name, — the Filham, or Filhol, spoken in the canton 
which surrounds the city of Buntoun; this town is situate 
upon the river Koya, at about three weeks' march from the 
Gambia. 

2d. — The Sola group, which comprises the Bola talked in the 
land of Gole and that of Bourama,— the Sarar, idiom of the 
country of this name stretching along the sea to the west of 
Balanta and to the north of the district where the Bola is 
spoken, — the Pepil spoken in the isle of Bischlao or Bisao. 

3d. — The Biafada group, or Dchola, spoken at the west of 
JSTkabou and north of Nalou, — the Padschade, which is an 
idiom met with at the west of Koniadschi and east of 
Kabou. 

4th. — The Bulom group, comprehending the Baga, a tongue 
spoken by one of the popoulations of this name which 
inhabits the borders of the Kalum-Baga, eastward, to the 
islands of Los, 21 — the Timne talked at the east of 
Sierra-Leone, — the Bulom spoken in the country of this 
name that bounds on Timne, — the Mampua, or Manpa 
Bulom, called also Scherbo, idiom of the region extending 
westward of the Ocean, between Sierra-Leone and the land 
of Bourn, — the Kisi, spoken west and north of Gbandi, and 
east of Mende. 
II. — MANDINGO family — spread over the north-west of Upper 
Soodan. 

22 It is unknown to what family of tongues belong the idioms of the other populations 
termed Baga, who dwell upon the banks of the Rio-Nunez and Rio-Pongas. 



62 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

This very extended family comprehends the Mandingo, 
properly so termed, or better the Mende', — the Kabunga, 
Mandingo dialect spoken in the land of Kabou, — and 
several other dialects of the same language, such as the 
Tokonka, dialect of Toro ; the Dchalunka, dialect of Fouta- 
djalon ; the Kankanka, dialect of Kankan ; the Bambara, 
the Kono, talked westwards and northwards of the Kisi; 
the Vei, in the country of this name situate to the east of 
the Atlantic and north of Gbandi, which embraces several 
dialects, viz : the Tene, spoken in the land so called, that 
has Souwekourou for its capital ; the Gbandi, spoken at the 
north of Gula and at the west of Nieriiva; the Landoro, 
talked west of Limba; the Mende, spread over the west 
of Kono and the Kisi, and east of Karo; the Gbese, 
idiom of the borders of the river Nyua; the Toma, called 
likewise Bouse, spoken in the land of the same name 
situated to the south of that of the Gbese; and the Gio, 
talked westward from Fa. 
EX— UPPER-GUINEAN— that is, the languages of the Pepper, 
Ivory, Gold and Slave, coasts, decompose themselves into 
three groups, viz : 

1st. — The Kroo tongues, comprising the Dewoi, spoken on 
the banks of the river De, or St. Paul's ; the Bassa, talked 
in a portion of the Liberian territory ; the Era, or Kroo, 
spread south of the Bassa along the coast; the Krebo, 
spoken in a neighboring canton ; the Gbe, or Gbei, whose 
domain lies east of the Great Bassa. 

2d. — The languages of Dahomey, of which the principal are 
the Dahome, or Popo ; the Mahe, spoken eastward of the 
Dahome ; and the Hwida, talked in the country of that 
name, located to the south of the GeUfe islands. 

3d. — The languages Akou-Igala, embracing the numerous 
dialects of the speech of the Akou, among which the 
Yozouba, spoken between Egba and the Niger, — and the 
Igala, language of the country of that name — are the most 
important. 23 "We shall revert further on to the Yozouba. 
IV. — The languages of the north-west of UPPER SOODAN divide 
themselves into four groups : 

1st. — The group Guzen, represented chiefly by the idiom of 
a very barbarian people, the Guzescha, who inhabit to the 
west of Ton ; 

a The Tebou, of which M. D'Avezac has published the grammar [Mimoires de la Socieie 
Etlmologique de Paris, II, part 2, pp. 106 seqq.), appertains to this group. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 63 

2d. — The group Legba, which embraces the Legba and the 

Kiamba ; 
3d. — The group Koama, to which belongs the Bagbalan ; 
4th. — And lastly, the group Kasm, spoken westward of the 

land of the Gfuzescha. 

V. — The tongues of the DELTA of the Niger are divided into three 

groups : — the first represented by the Ibo dialects, — the 
second by the Egbele and several other idioms, — the third 
by the dialect of Okouloma, the name of a maritime dis- 
trict near the country of the Ibo and that of Outcho. 

VI. — The NUPE family, or languages of the basin of the Tchadda, 

— a family embracing nine idioms, of which the principal 
are the ]STup:e, or Tatba, spoken in a country neighboring 
Raba on the Niger ; and the Goali, or Gbali, talked to the 
east of the ISTupe. 

VII. — The family of CENTAL-AFRICAN languages is composed 
of two groups : 
1st. — The tongues of Bornotl, which comprise also those of 
the Kanam, and the Budouma, spoken in the lake-isle of 
that name. The main language of Bornou is the Kanouri, 
which attaches itself by close relationship to the three 
tongues of Guinea, — the Ashantee, the Fantee, and the 
Odji. 
2d. — This group comprehends the Pika, or FiKA, and the 
Bode dialects spoken west of Bornou. 

VHT. — The WOLQE, or JIOLOF, spoken by the populations of 
Senegambia, distinguishes itself, with sufficient sharpness, 
from all the preceding tongues ; and offers a grammatical 
system that has more than one trait in common with the 
Semitic languages. 

IX. — In the same region, another family of tongues has the E00- 
LAH, or PEULE, for its type ; one dialect of which is 
spoken by the Fellatahs, and very probably also by the 
Hausa, or Haousans. The vocabulary of these divers idioms, 
and notably that of the Peule, has presented a remarkable 
analogy with the Malayo-Polynesian 34 languages, of which 
we shall treat anon. It seems, therefore, that the Peule 
family might not, perhaps, be attachable to African tongues. 
The Wolof, although constituting a separate family, ap- 
proaches in certain points the Yozouba, spoken to the 

24 Gustave d'Eichthal, ffisloire el Origine des Foulahs ou Fellans, Paris, 1841 (Tirage & 
part de l'Extrait des Memoires de la Societe Ethnologique). 



64 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

north of the Bight of Benin, — between the 2d and 3d de- 
gree of W. long., and the 6th and 10th degree of IS. latitude. 
The Wolof demarcates itself by its final inflexions. To it 
other idioms, seemingly, have to be attached : such as the 
Bidschago, or Bidshoro, which is spoken in the island of 
Wun, — the Gadschaya, idiom of a tribe called also Sehe- 
rule, or Serawouli, — and lastly the Goura. 

X. — Another group, which is characterized by initial inflexions, is 

spread over the basin of the Gambia, and is represented by 
the Landoma, that is spoken in the land of KaJcondi, — and 
the Nabou, used in the canton of Kahondan. 
The Wolof verb is susceptible of seventeen modifications, 
that consist in adding to each radical one or two syl- 
lables, and which extend or restrict its acceptation. It is 
something like the forms of the Arabic verb. The article 
follows the substantive, and embodies itself with it, as in 
agglutinate languages. The plural article exhibits equally 
an especial characteristic that makes it participate of a 
demonstrative pronoun. In general, the Wolof offers, in its 
phonology, that same harmonical disposition which belongs 
to all the African languages. 

XI. — Although the Wolof approximates to the YOZOUBA more 

than to any other African tongue, these two idioms still re- 
main separated by a difference sufficiently defined. The 
Yozouba possesses, in its grammatical system, a great 
degree of perfection and regularity. One observes in it an 
" ensemble " of prefixes complete and regular, that, upon 
joining themselves to the verb, give birth to a multitude of 
other words formed through a most simple process. The 
radical thus passes on the abstract idea of action into all 
derivative concrete ideas ; and thus reciprocally by the addi- 
tion of a simple prefix, a noun becomes a possessive verb. 

Another peculiarity of the Yozouba is, that the same ad- 
verb varies in form and even in nature according to the 
species of words it qualifies. 

The Yozouba system, notwithstanding its individuality, con- 
nects itself tolerably near with that of the tongues of 
Congo. The M'pongwe, for example, spoken on the Gaboon 
coast, forms its verbs by adding a monosyllabic prefix to the 
substantive ; by opposition to certain Senegambian languages, 
such as the Mandingo, in which they employ suffixes to 
modify the sense of the verb or the noun. 
XXI. — The CONGrO-languages appertain to that great formation of 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 65 

African tongues of which we treated ahove, and that divide 
themselves into many groups, united incontestably by close 
bonds. 

1st. — The first group is that of the tongues of Congo ; the 
whole of them characterized by the initial flexion. They 
embrace the languages of the tribes named Atam, of which 
one of the chiefest is the TJdom, spoken in a country of this 
name, which has Ebil for its capital, — the languages of Mo- 
ftos-tribes, that subdivide themselves into several groups, 
embracing a great number of idioms, — the tongues of Congo 
and of Angola that comprise three groups ; the first, repre- 
sented above all by the Mbamba ; the second, by the Ba- 
huma, or Mobuma; and the third, by the JSPgola, speech of 
Angola. 

2d. — The second group, comprehends the toDgues of South- 
West Africa, viz : the Kihiau, that also forms its verbs by 
means of prefixes, and attaches itself very nearly to the 
Congo-languages. It appears to identify itself with the 
MuNTOU-tongue, spoken by the Veiao, whom one encounters 
in the country of Knyas, about two months' journey west 
from the Mozambique coast. To this group, likewise, be- 
longs the Marawi, the Niamban, and many other languages. 

3d. — The third group is represented by the Souahilee-tongues ; 
comprising the Souahili properly so-called, spoken by the 
inhabitants of the coasts of Zanzibar; and the languages 
of neighboring peoples who dwell to the south of the Galla- 
country; such as the Wanika, the Okaouafi, the "Wakamba. 
A good deal of the BjHiAtr-language is met with in the Sou- 
ahili ; which indicates well the affinity of the two groups. 

4th. — The fourth, the group-Caffr, comprehends the Zoulou, 
or Caffr proper, — the Temneh, the Sechuana, the Damara, 
and the Kiniea. All these languages offer the same organ- 
ism, and a great richness of changes (votes) together with an 
extreme poverty of verbs. 
Xl II. — The tongues of the preceding formation approximate in a 
very singular manner, as regards certain points of their 
organism, to that family that may be termed HAMITIC 
(from Khime, Chernmia, the ancient native name of Egypt); 
and which has for its type the Egyptian,' of which the 
Coptic is but a more modern derivative. To it may be 
attached, on the eastern side, the Galla ; and on the western, 
the Berber. 

The Egyptian is known to us from a high antiquity, thanks 
5 



66 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

to its hieroglyphical system of writing, of which the employ- 
ment mounts up to at least 3500 years before our era. This 
writing, — wherein are beheld the figured and metaphysical 
representations of objects (mostly indigenous to the Nile) 
gradually passed into the state of signs of articulation — 
permits us to assist, as it were, at the formation of speech. 
Through the use of these signs, one seizes the first appa- 
rition of verbal forms, as well as of a host of prepositions. 
The basis of Egyptian seems to be monosyllabic; but the 
employment of numerous particles very soon created many 
dissyllables. This language recognizes two articles, two 
genders, two numbers. The verb through its conjuga- 
tions, — which is are made by the aid of prefixes and suffixes, 
and that counts many changes, — participates more of the 
Indo-European grammatical system than of the Semitic. 
Egyptian vocalization seems to have been very rich in 
aspirates. 
This linguistic family, to which the Egyptian belongs, 
would appear to have been very widely extended at the 
beginning. The Berber, vulgarice Kabyle, now almost re- 
duced to the condition of a "patois," has a tolerably rich 
literature, and comprehends several very distinct dialects, 
viz : the Algerian Berber, spoken by the Kabail — moun- 
tain tribes of the Atlas — imbued with Arabic words ; the 
Mozabee, the Shillouh, the Zenatiya of the province of 
Constantine, and the Towerga, or Touarik. 
XIV, — The HOTTENTOT family of tongues — or "langues 1 
Klies," cliceing languages — is characterized by the odd 
aspiration, so designated, which mingles itself (as a sort of 
gluching) in the pronunciation of the greater number of 
words. Hottentot languages bear, above all in the conju- 
gation of their verbs, the character of agglutination. Like 
Semitic tongues, they are deprived of the relative pronoun. 
They distinguish two plurals for the pronoun of the first 
person, the one exclusive and the other inclusive; the 
former excluding the idea of the person to whom a dis- 
course is addressed ; and the latter, on the contrary, inclo- 
sing it. In their nouns, there exist two genders in the sin- 
gular,, and three in the plural number, — this third one, 
called common, has a collective value. It follows that when 
an object be designated in the singular, its gender always 
becomes indicated. These tongues distinguish three num- 
bers, but they are unacquainted with the case ; whilst the 



CLASSIFICATION OP TONGUES. 67 

adjective remains completely indeclinable, and takes neither 
the mark of gender nor of number. 
This family of clicking languages comprehends the Hottentot, 
or Quaiquai, — and the Bosjesman dialects, ISTamaqua and 

KOEANA. 

Notwithstanding its strange phonological system, the family 
of Hottentot tongues is not altogether so profoundly dis- 
tinct from African languages, as one might be tempted to 
suppose at first sight. It is incontrovertible that these 
sounds, in nature at one and the same time nasal and 
guttural, which we term Kliks, constitute a special charac- 
teristic ; but the foundation of the grammatical forms in 
Hottentot idioms is met with among the tongues of Africa. 
Thus, the verb presents, like them, a great richness of 
changes : it has a form direct, negative, reciprocal, causative ; 
and all these voies are produced by the addition of a particle 
to the end of the verbal radical. Their double plural, a 
common and a particular, is a trait which assimilates them 
to the Polynesian and even to the American languages. 
The double form of the first person plural, indicating if the 
personage addressed be comprised in the "we," or is ex- 
cluded from it — writes Wilhelm von Humboldt — has been 
again met with in a great number of American tongues, 
and had been assumed until now to be an especial characte- 
ristic of these languages. This character is encountered, 
however, in the majority of the languages that we are here 
considering ; in that of the Malays, in that of the Philip- 
pine isles, and in that of Polynesia. In Polynesian tongues, 
it extends even to the dual; and such, moreover, is its 
particular form, in them, that, were we to guide ourselves 
by logical considerations merely, it would become neces- 
sary to view these tongues, as being the cradle and the 
veritable father-land of this grammatical form. Outside 
of the South Sea, and of America, I know of it nowhere 
else than among the Mandchoux. Since Wilhelm von 
■ Humboldt penned these words, the same grammatical pecu- 
liarity, which exists in the Malgache (of Madagascar), has 
been discovered in an African tongue, — the VEi-language. 
African languages present, therefore, to speak properly, but 
a very feeble homogeneity. The same multiplicity of 
shades, that is particularly observed among the Blacks, 
reappears in their idioms. 
On studying the grammars and the vocabularies of the 
latter, one seizes the tracing-thread of those numberless 



68 OK THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

crossings which have made, of the branches of the Negro- 
race, populations very unequal in development of faculties, 
and in intelligence exceedingly diverse. One perceives a 
Semitic influence in the speech, as one sometimes discovers 
it in the type of face. The Hottentots, who are more dis- 
tinct from Negro-populations than any other race of Austral 
Africa, separate themselves equally through their tongue. 
The Foulahs and the "Wolofs, so superior to the other 
Negroes by their intellect and their energy, distinguish 
themselves equally through the respective characteristics 
of their idiom. And in like manner that, maugre the 
variety of physical forms, a common color, differently shaded 
(nuance'e), reunites into one group all those inhabitants of 
Africa whose origin is not Asiatic, a common character 
links together the grammars of their languages; — or, in 
other words, African idioms have all a family-air, without 
precisely resembling each other. 

There is one important remark to be made here. It is, that 
some African languages denote a development sufficiently 
advanced of the faculty of speech, and consequently of the 
reflective aptitudes of which this is the manifestation. In 
this fact we have a new proof that tells against the unity 
of the origin of languages. Because, if African languages 
were the issue of other idioms, fallen in some way among 
minds more narrow (homes) than had been those of the 
supposed-elder nations that spoke them, they ought neces- 
sarily to have become impoverished, to have altered them- 
selves ; and the laws, which have been established above in 
the history of one and the same tongue, would lead us to 
expect that these last ought to be at once more analytical 
and more simple. 

Now, their very-pronounced characteristic of agglutination 
excludes the idea of languages arising from out of the 
decomposition of others ; and the complex nature of their 
grammar attests a date extremely ancient for their forma- 
tion. The idioms of Africa carry, then, the stamp both of 
primitive and complicated languages ; and, as a conse- 
quence, of tongues which are not derived, at an epoch 
relatively modern, from other languages possessing the 
same parallel character. Hence it must be concluded, that 
these African languages are formations as ancient as other 
linguistic formations ; possessing their own characteristics ; 
and of which the analogies correspond with those that bind 
up together the great branches of the Negro-race. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 69 

"We have seen that a few of the African languages recall to mind, 
either through their vocabulary, or by peculiarities of their grammar, 
the Polynesian idioms. 

These idioms constitute, as it were, a grand Zone, that extends 
betwixt Africa and America : and this position explains how migra- 
tions of the race that spoke them, and which we shall call Malayo- 
Polynesian, may have come over to blend themselves with the negroes 
of Africa. From Madagascar as far as Polynesia, we find a family 
of similar tongues that has become designated by the name of Ma- 
layo-Polynesian, after that of the race. 

It decomposes itself into two groups, viz : the Malay group, com- 
prehending an "ensemble" of idioms spoken from Madagascar to 
the Philippine-islands ; and the Polynesian group, properly so-termed. 

One meets again, in this family, with the self-same inequality of 
development amid the different languages that compose it. Whilst 
the Malay denotes an advanced degree of culture, the idioms of Po- 
lynesia offer a simplicity altogether primitive. These have restricted 
their phonetic system within very narrow limits ; and they employ 
matter-of-fact methods, no less than very poor forms, in order to 
mark the grammatical categories. It is through the help of particles, 
oftentimes equivocal, that these languages try to give clearness to a 
discourse compounded, albeit, of rigid and invariable elements. The 
structure of Polynesian words is much more simple than that of the 
Malay words : a syllable cannot be terminated by a consonant fol- 
lowed by a vowel ; or it is not even formed save through a single 
vowel. These languages are, besides, deprived of sibilants ; and they 
tend towards a planing-away of homogeneous consonants, and to 
cause those that possess a too-pronounced individuality to disappear. 
It has seemed, therefore, that the Polynesian tongues result from the 
gradual alteration of Malay languages ; which are far more energetic 
and much more defined. Otherwise this Polynesian family offers a 
tolerably great homogeneity : everywhere one re-beholds in it this 
identical elementary phonology. The idioms of the Marquesas-isles, 
of New-Zealand, of Taiti, of the Society-islands, of the Sandwich and 
Tonga, are bound together by close ties of relationship. Such is the 
paucity of their vocal system, that they have recourse frequently to 
the repetition of the same syllable, in order to form new words. 
The onomatopee is very frequent in them. The grammatical cate- 
gories are also but vaguely indicated ; and one often sees the same 
word belonging to different parts of the same sentence. The methods 
of enunciating one idea are sometimes the same, whether for ex- 
pressing an action or for designating an object. The gender and 
number are often not even indicated. The vocal system (which 



70 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

recalls, in certain respects, that of the Dravidian tongues) seems, 
by the way, to have undergone, in the course of time, modifications 
sufficiently deep. 

The Malgache, or Malagasy, spoken at the island of Madagascar, 
constitutes, as it were, a link between the Malayo-Polynesian idioms 
and those of Africa. Mr. J. R. Logan, in an excellent sei'ies of labors 
on this tongue, 25 makes it seen how several traits in common existed 
between the Malgache and those tongues of the great Souahilee- 
Congo family, which he terms Zimhian. The same system of sounds. 
One finds again in them that euphony signalized in the idioms of 
Central Africa, associated with those double letters, nip, m d, nh, nd, 
n j, tr, dr, ndr, nr, ts, nts, tz, that also characterize the languages 
of Africa. Prefixes serve equally in them to represent the categorical 
forms of a word. Finally, that which is still more characteristic, the 
Malgache does not distinguish genders any more than do the African 
idioms ; and, like the vast Souahilee-Congo group, it carries with it 
the generical distinction, according as beings are animate, rational, 
or inanimate, irrational. But, side by side with these striking ana- 
logies, there exist fundamental differences. The Malgache-vocabu- 
lary is African in no manner whatever, although it may have imbibed 
some words of idioms from the coast of Africa : it might approach 
rather towards the Hamitic vocabulary ; but its pronouns are peculiar 
to itself. It possesses quite an especial and really characteristic power 
for combining formative prefixes ; and many traits attach it to those 
tongues of the Soodan which have surprised philologers by their 
analogies with Polynesian languages. 

It is, therefore, evident that the Malgache represents to us a mix- 
ture of idioms ; or, to speak more exactly, the result of influences 
exerted upon a Polynesian idiom by African languages, and, with 
some plausibility likewise, by those of the Hamitic class. This com- 
mingling betrays itself equally in the population of Madagascar. 
Evidently in this island, to judge by the pervading type of its inha- 
bitants, there has been an infusion of black blood into the insular, 
or reciprocally. In general, the races that find themselves spread 
over the zone occupied by the families of Malayo-Polynesian lan- 
guages do not at all present homogeneity ; and one must admit that 
they descend from innumerable crossings. Nevertheless, the fact — if 
fact it be, after the analyses of Crawfukd, indicated farther on — of a 
(fond) substratum of words in common, and of a grammar reposing 
upon the same bases, proves that one and the same race has exer- 
cised its influence over all these populations. 

25 The Journal of ike Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, Singapore, — Supplementary 
No. for 1854, pp. 481 seqq. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 71 

Where must one go and seek for the cradle of this race ? Com- 
parative philology places us upon a trail towards its discovery. 
There exists in the trans-Gangetic peninsula an "ensemble" of lan- 
guages appertaining to the same family as the Chinese ; by attaching 
itself on the one hand to the Thibetan, and on the other to the 
Siamese. These tongues have been designated by the name "mono- 
syllabic," because the primitive monosyllabism is perceived in them 
in all its original simplicity. In monosyllabic languages, there yet 
exist only simple words rendered through one single emission of the 
voice. These words are, at one and the same time, both substantives 
and verbs : they express the notion, the idea, independently of the 
word ; and it is the modus through which this word becomes placed 
in relationship with other words that indicates its categorical sense in 
a sentence. The Chinese tongue — above all under its ancient or 
archaic form — is the purest type of this monosyllabism. It corres- 
ponds in this manner to the older period which had preceded that 
of agglutination. 

Every Chinese word — otherwise said, each syllable — is composed 
of its initial and of its final sound. The initial sound is one of the 
136 Chinese consonants; the final sound is a vowel that never 
tolerates other than a nasal consonant, in which it often terminates, 
or else a second vowel. "What characterizes the Chinese, as well as 
the other languages of the same family, is the accent that manifests 
itself by a sort of singing intonation ; which varies by four different 
ways in the Chinese, reduces itself to two in the Barman, and ends 
by effacing itself in the Thibetan. The presence of this accent 
destroys all harmony, and opposes itself to the "liaison" of words 
amongst themselves ; because, the minutest change in the tone of a 
word would give birth to another word. In order that speech should 
remain intelligible, it is imperative that the pronunciation of a given 
word must be invariable. Hence the absence of what philologists 
call "phonology" in the Chinese family. Albeit, in the vernacular 
Siamese, already an inclination manifests itself to lay stress upon, 
or rather to drawl out, the last word in a compound expression. 
These compounded expressions abound in Chinese ; the words that 
enter into them give birth, in reality, through their assemblage, to a 
new word ; because the sense of this expression has often no resem- 
blance whatsoever, almost no relationship, to that of the two or 
three words out of which it is formed. 

The drawling upon the second syllable that takes place in the 
Siamese is the point of departure from monosyllabism, which already 
shows itself still more in the Qambodjian. The Barman corresponds 
to the passage of monosyllabic tongues, wherein the sounds are not 



72 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

oonnected, into languages in which the sounds are hound together. 
Indeed, nearly all the Barman words are monosyllabic; but they 
have the faculty of modifying themselves in their pronunciation so 
as to hitch themselves on to the other words, and hence originate a 
more harmonious vocalization. 

All the basin of the Irawaddy, and Aracan (that is separated from 
the Burmese empire by a chain of mountains running nearly parallel 
to the sea, the mounts Teoma), are inhabited by tribes speaking 
idioms of the same family as the Barman. Little by little, other 
languages of the same family, such as the Laos, have been driven 
back from the north-west of the trans-Gangetic peninsula by con- 
quering populations emanating from this Burmese race, which now- 
adays opposes such an energetic resistance to the English. It is 
precisely to the same race that belong the more savage populations 
of Assam. Here, speech and their physical type leave no room for 
doubt in this respect. Of this number are the Singpho and the 
Manipouri. 

But, that the Thibetan is itself nothing but a modification, but an 
alteration, of the languages of this same monosyllabic family, is what 
becomes apparent to us through the tongues of several tribes of 
Assam and of Aracan, — such as that of the Nagas, and that of the 
Youmas, which serve for the transit from the Barman into the Thi- 
betan. These more or less barbarian populations, spread out at the 
north-west of the trans-Gangetic peninsula, have all the character 
of the race that has been called the yellow. Evidently it is there 
that one must seek for the savage type of the Chinese family. 

The Thibetan is certainly that tongue which most detaches itself 
from the monosyllabic family ; and, by many of its traits, it ap- 
proaches the Dravidian idioms. It demarcates itself from the Bar- 
man through its combinations of particular consonants, of which the 
vocal effect is sweeter and more mollified ; but the numerous aspi- 
rates and nasals of the Chinese and the Barman are re-beheld in it. 
Upon comparing the monuments of the ancient Barman tongue, 
with those of the ancient Thibetan, one perceives that formerly this 
language had more of asperity, — asperity of which the Thibetan still 
preserves traces ; because, notwithstanding its combinations of 
softened consonants, this language is at the bottom completely 
devoid of harmony. Particles placed after the word modify its sense, 
and the order of these words is always the inverse of what it is in 
our idioms. Hence the apparition, in these tongues, of the first 
lineaments of that process of agglutination already so conspicuous in 
the Barman. One may construct in it some entire sentences com- 
posed of disjointed words, linked between each other only by the 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES 73 

retro-active virtue, or faculty, of a final word; and it is thus that 
these languages arrive at rendering the ideas of time still more com- 
plex. The Barman, in particular, is, in this respect, of very great 
richness, — a series of proper names can be treated in it as an unity, 
and may take on at the end the mark u do" of the plural, which 
reacts then upon the whole : and even a succession of substantives is 
susceptible of taking the indefinite plural u mya." 

These languages cause us, therefore, to assist, so to say, at the 
birth of agglutinative idioms, of which the Basque has afforded us, 
in Europe, such a curious specimen. Albeit, whatever be the de- 
velopment that several idioms of the trans-Gangetic peninsula may 
bave acquired through the effects of their successive evolution, they 
are all not the less of extreme simplicity. The Barman is the most 
elaborated of the whole family; whereas the Chinese, and the speech 
of the empire of Annam, are but very little. As concerns the vocal 
system, on the contrary, the Thibetan and the Barman do not raise 
themselves much above the Chinese ; and it is in the south of the 
trans-Grangetic peninsula that one must inquire for more developed 
articulations, always exercising themselves, however, upon a small 
number of monosyllabic sounds. On the opposite hand, the tongues 
of the south-east of that peninsula approximate more to the Chi- 
nese as regards syntax. 

One sees, then, that, maugre their unity, the monosyllabic lan- 
guages form groups so distinct that one cannot consider them as 
proceeding the ones from the others, but which are respectively con- 
nected through divers analogies ; and that they must, in consequence, 
be placed simply parallel with each other, at distances ever unequal 
from the original monosyllabism. Although the Barman and the 
Thibetan approach each other very much, — and that they find, in 
certain idioms, as it were, a frontier in common, — they still remain 
too far asunder with regard to the grammar, the vocabulary and the 
pronunciation, for it to be admitted that one may be derived from 
the other. They seem rather to be, according to the observation of 
Mr. Logan, two debris differently altered of a more ancient tongue 
that had the same basis as the Chinese. 

Thus one must believe that, from a most remote epoch, the yellow 
race occupies all the south-east of Asia ; because the employment of 
these monosyllabic languages is a characteristical trait which never 
deceives. In those defiles of Assam where so many different tribes 
— repelled thither by the conquests of the Aryas, of the Chinese and 
the Burmese — find themselves gathered, the races of Tartar-type all 
distinguish themselves from the Dravidian tongues through then 



74 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

monosyllabic structure, allied sometimes to the Thibetan, at others 
to the Barman. 

In the peninsula of Malacca, or Malaya, and amid the isles of 
Malaysia, one meets with some populations which, as regards the 
type, recall to mind the most barbarous tribes of Assam, — the Gar- 
rows, for example. There have been found again at Sumatra some 
tribes whose customs and whose type very much recall those of the 
savage populations at the north-east of Hindostan. The Nagas, or 
Kakhyens, of whose tongue we have already spoken, possess a very 
remarkable similitude of traits and usages with the Polynesians and 
divers indigenous septs of Sumatra. They tattoo themselves like the 
islanders of the South Sea. Every time they have slain a foe, they 
make (as has been observed amongs the Pagai of Sumatra) a new 
mark on their skins ; and, as takes places among the Aboungs — 
another people of the same island — and also among certain savages 
of Borneo, a young man must not wed so long as he has not cut off 
a certain number of the heads of enemies. Among the Michmis — 
another tribe of Assam — one finds again the usage, so universal in 
Polynesia, and equally diffused amid the Sumatran Pagais, of ex- 
posing the dead upon scaffolds until the flesh becomes corrupted and 
disengages itself from the bones. All these tribes of Assam, which 
remind us as well of the indigenous septs of the Sunda-islands as 
of the primitive population of the peninsula of Malacca, speak mono- 
syllabic tongues appertaining to the Tbibeto-Barman, or Siamo- 
Barman, family. This double circumstance induced the belief that 
it is the trans-G-angetic peninsula whence issued the Malayo- 
Polynesian populations. The languages they speak cluster around 
the Siamese and the Barman ; but, in the ratio that they are removed 
from their cradle, their sounds become softened down, and they 
become impoverished, whilst evermore tending, however, to get rid 
of the monosyllabism that gave them birth. 

These transformations, undergone by the Malayo-Polynesian lan- 
guages, have been, nevertheless, sufficiently profound to efface those 
traits in common due to their relationship. They arise, according 
to probability, from the numerous interminglings that have been 
operated in Oceanica. 

"Whilst some petty peoples of the Thibeto-Chinese source were 
descending, through the trans-Gangetic peninsula, into Malaysia, 
and advanced incessantly towards the East, those Dravidian tribes 
that occupied India, and which themselves issued from a stock, if 
not identical, at least very neighborly with the preceding, were 
coming to cross themselves with these Malaysian populations. But 
such cross-breeding was not the only one. There was another that 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 75 

altered the race still more. This commingling took effect with a 
third population that appears to have been the veritable primitive 
race of the south of Hindostan- — a black race which has been thrown 
to the east, but whose remains are still found about the middle of 
the Indian Sea, at the Andaman islets, and that constitutes the 
foundation of the pristine population of Borneo and the Philippines. 
It seems to be the same population that occupied exclusively, prior 
to the advent of Europeans in those waters, New Guinea, Australia, 
Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), and divers archipelagoes placed to 
the eastward of New South Wales. 

The tongues of these black Oceanic tribes were, without doubt, 
very barbarous, and they have been, in several cases, promptly sup- 
planted by the Malayan idioms. They have, notwithstanding, still 
left traces of their existence at the Sandwich isles, which seem to 
have been occupied at the beginning, and before the arrival of the 
Polynesians proper, by the black race. The ground-work of their 
vocabulary has remained Australian, although the grammar is wholly 
Polynesian. It is the same at the Viti islands. Elsewhere, how- 
ever, as at the Philippines, those blacks who are known under the 
name of Aiytas, (Ajetas), or Igolotes, have adopted the idiom of the 
Malayan family, which has penetrated into their island with the 
conquerors. 

Unhappily, we possess but very little information concerning the 
Australian languages. All that may be affirmed is, that they were 
quite distinct from the two groups of the Malayo-Polynesian family : 
the Malay group and the Polynesian group being themselves very 
sharply separated. 

Mr. Logan has caught certain analogies between the Dravidian 
idioms and the Australian tongues: which is easily understood; 
because the populations that expelled from Hindostan those puny 
tribes which, at the beginning, had lived dispersed therein, must have 
exerted by their language some influence over the idiom of these 
septs, which was evidently very uncouth. A profound study of the 
names of number, in all the idioms of the Dravidian family, has 
revealed to him the existence of a primary numerical system purely 
binary, — which is met with again in the Australian languages ; aud 
it corresponds to that little-advanced stage in which one would sup- 
pose the black race that had peopled India must have been. And 
this binary system, which the later progress of intelligence in the 
Dravidian race has caused to be replaced by more developed systems 
— the quinary system, and the decimal — has left some traces both in 
tongues of the southern trans-Gangetic peninsula, and amidst certain 



76 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

populations of the peninsula of Malaya. 26 Now, we again encounter, 
even yet, this binary system among Australian populations. 

The Dravidian idioms have, then, chased before them the Austra- 
lian tongues at a primordial epoch that now loses itself in the night 
of time. At a later age, there appeared the Malayo-Polynesian lan- 
guages, which have coalesced in order to push still farther on to the 
eastward, or at least to drive within a more circumscribed space, 
these same Australian tongues. Then, after having implanted them- 
selves in those islands whence the Australian savages had been gra- 
dually expulsed, the two groups, the Malay and the Polynesian, 
declared war against each other ; and now- a-days, in the Indian 
Ocean, the Polynesian becomes more and more crowded out by the 
Malay. 

This fact brings us back naturally to the problem of the origin of 
that linguistic formation which we have designated by the name 
" Malayo-Polynesian." 

"We have said that the Thibeto-Barman races had expelled from 
India those black tribes with which they must have intermingled in 
certain cantons. The Dravidian populations acted in the same way. 
Several of the primitive tribes of Hindostan preserve still, in their 
features and in their skin, the impress of an infusion of Australian 
blood. Has a mixture of another nature taken place in Polyne- 
sia ? Are the islanders of the Great Ocean born from the crossing 
of some race coming from elsewhere ? Several ethnologists, and 
notably M. Gustave d'Eichthal, 27 have admitted that the Polynesians 
came from the east. Besides the resemblances of usage which these 
ethnographers have perceived between divers American populations 
(and especially those of the Gfuarani family) and the Polynesians, 
they have discovered, in their respective idioms, a considerable 
number of words in common. Nevertheless, such similitudes are 
neither sufficiently general, nor sufficiently striking, to enable us 
with certainty to identify the two races. There are concordances 
that, as regards words, may originate simply from migrations ; or 
which, as regards forms of syntax, result from parity of grammatical 
development. 

This does not prevent the employment of other facts (as yet histori- 
cally unproven, and fraught with tremendous physical obstacles) to 
demonstrate the possibility of the emigration of some American popu- 
lations ; but upon this point languages do not yield us anything 
decisive. More conclusive are the comparisons that M. d'Eichthal 

26 Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, April — June, 1855, p. 180. 
21 Etudes sur VEistoire Primitive des Races Oeianiennes et Americaines, by the learned "Se- 
cretaire-adjoint de la Society Ethnologique." 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 77 

has made between the tongues of those FoulaJis, or Eellatahs, that 
inhabit Senegarnbia, and some idioms of the Malayo-Polynesian 
family. These analogies are too striking for us to refuse some recog- 
nition of an identity of origines ; which, furthermore, resiles from 
many other comparisons. The light complexion of the Eoulahs, and 
the superiority of their intellect, had at an early hour attracted the 
notice of voyagers. "We would admit, therefore, that the Malayo- 
Polynesian race, — whilst it advanced towards the south-east of Asia, 
and exterminated or vanquished the black races — had penetrated on 
the opposite hand into Africa ; crossed itself with the negro popula- 
tions ; and thus gave birth to the Foulah-tribes and their congener 
peoples. At Madagascar, we re-encounter this same Malayo-Polyne- 
sian race under the name of Ovas, or Hovas. This island appears like 
the point of re-partition of the race that might be named " par excel- 
lence" Oceanic, because it is by sea that it has invariably advanced. 

[JTot to interrupt the order of the foregoing sketch of these Oceanic 
languages, we have hitherto refrained from presenting another con- 
temporaneous view, that would, in many respects, modify the one 
which, on the European continent, represents an opinion now cur- 
rent among philologists concerning those families of tongues to 
which the name " Malayo-Polynesian" has been applied. If the high 
authority of Mr. John Crawfurd 28 were to be passed over in Malayan 
subjects, our argument would lack completeness ; at the same time 
that the results of the learned author of the " History of the Indian 
Archipelago," were they rigorously established, would merely ope- 
rate upon those we have set forth, so far as breaking up into several 
distinct groups, — such as, Malgaohe, Malay, Papuan, Harfoorian, 
Polynesian, Australian, Tasvianian, &c, — the families of languages, 
in this treatise, denominated by ourselves Malayo-Polynesian. And 
it must be conceded concerning those tongues spoken by the perhaps- 
indigenous black races of Malaysia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, that, 
while, on the one hand, science possesses at present but scanty infor- 
mation; on the other, no man has devoted more patience and skill 
to the analysis of such materials as we have, than Mr. Crawfurd. 
The following is a brief coup d'ceil over his researches. 

" A certain connexion, of more or less extent, is well ascertained 
to exist between most of the languages which prevail from Mada- 
gascar to Easter Island in the Pacific, and from Formosa, on the 
coast of China, to 'New Zealand. It exists, then, over two hundred 
degrees of longitude, and seventy of latitude, or over a fifth part of 

the surface of the earth. ****** The vast region of which I 

— — — 

28 A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, London, in 8vo., 1852; vol. i., 
Dissertation and Grammar. 



78 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

have given the outline may be geographically described as consist- 
ing of the innumerable islands of the Indian Archipelago, from 
Sumatra to New Guinea — of the great group of the Philippines — of 
the islands of the North and South Pacific — and of Madagascar. 
It is inhabited by many different and distinct races of men, — as the 
Malayan, the brown Polynesian, the insular Negro of several varie- 
ties, and the African of Madagascar." 

Beginning with these last, Mr. Crawfurd says, — " Very clear 
traces of a Malayan tongue are found some 3000 miles distant from 
the nearest part of the Malayan Archipelago, and only 240 miles 
from the eastern shore of Africa. Prom this isolated fact (which 
the author, pp. eclxxvi — xxxi, shows by historical navigation to be 
by no means improbable), the importance and the value of which I 
am about to test, some writers have jumped to the conclusion that 
the language of Madagascar is of the same stock with Malay and 
Javanese, and hence, again, that the people who speak it are of the 
same race with the Malays. It can be shown, without much diffi- 
culty, that there is no shadow of foundation for so extravagant an 
hypothesis." And, in fact, after exhibiting how in their grammars, 
both groups of tongues resemble each other merely by their simpli- 
city, he manifests, through a comparative vocabulary, that the whole 
number of known Malayan words, in the Malagasi language, is but 
168 in 8340 ; or about 20 in 1000. 

Next, the insular Negroes of the Pacific Archipelagoes — the 
" Puwa-puwa, or Papuwa, which, however, is only the adjective 
'frizzly,' or 'curling.' " After enumerating their physical characte- 
ristics at different islands, he concludes — "Here, then, without 
reckoning other Negro races of the Pacific which are known to 
exist, 29 we have, reckoning from the Andamans, twelve varieties, 
generally so differing from each other in complexion, in features, 
and in strength and stature, that some are puny pigmies under five 
feet high, and others large and powerful men of near six feet. To 
place all these in one category would be preposterous, and contrary 
to truth and reason." That they have no common language is made 
evident (p. clxxi) through a comparative vocabulary of seven of 
these Oriental Negro tongues ; whence the unavoidable conclusion 
that each is a distinct language. 

Adverting digressionally to the Australians, — who are never to 
be confounded, physically-speaking, with any of the woolly-haired 

29 In a later monograph on the "Negroes of the Indian Archipelago" (Edinburgh New 
Philosophical Journal, 1853, p. 78), Crawturd maintains, — "There are 15 varieties of 
Oriental Negroes. ****** There is no evidence, therefore, to justify the conclusion, 
that the Oriental Negro, wherever found, is one and the same race." 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 79 

blacks of the Pacific Archipelagoes. The point of contact between 
these distinct types is at Cape York, in Torres Straits, and around 
its neighboring islets. No where else has amalgamation betwixt 
them been perceived. "As to the great bulk of the inhabitants of 
Australia, they are assuredly neither Malays, Negroes, nor Poly- 
nesians, nor a mixture of any of these, but a very peculiar people, 
distinct from all the other races of men" (p. clxxvi). In lists of 
about thirty languages, already known in the yet-discovered parts 
of Australia, Mr. Crawfurd (p. ccxci) has been unable to detect 
more than four or five words of corrupt Malay ; and that only in 
the tongue of a tribe at Cobourg peninsula, once Port Essington. 

As to Polynesia, our author holds : — " The languages spoken over 
this vast area are, probably, nearly as numerous as the islands of 
themselves ; but still there is one of very wide dissemination, which 
has no native name, but which, with some propriety, has been called 
by Europeans, on account of its predominance, the Polynesian. 
This language, with variations of dialect, is spoken by the same 
race of men from the Eiji group west, to Easter island eastward, 
and from the Sandwich islands north, to the New Zealand islands 
south. The language and the race have been imagined to be essen- 
tially the same as the Malay, which is undoubtedly a great mistake" 
(p. cxxxiv). After pointing out their physical contrasts with cha- 
racteristic precision, he adds — " The attempt, therefore, to bring 
these two distinct races under the same category had better be 
dropped, for, as will be presently seen, even the evidence of lan- 
guage gives no countenance." Again bringing to his aid compara- 
tive vocabularies, Mr. Crawfurd (p. ccxl) ascertains that the total 
number of Malayan words, in the whole range of Polynesian 
tongues, is about 80 ; including even the numerals ; which them- 
selves make up nearly a sixth part of that trifling quantity, — on 
which imagination erects an hypothesis of unity, between the lusty 
and handsome islanders of the South Seas, and the squat and ill- 
favored navigators of Malayan waters. 

Lastly, the Malays themselves. Sumatra is, traditionally, their 
father-land; but they were wholly unknown to Europeans before 
Marco-Polo in 1295 ; and, 220 more years elapsed before acquaint- 
ance with them was real. From this centre they seem to have 
radiatedover the adjacent coasts and islands; subduing, extermina- 
ting, enslaving, or driving into the interior, the many sub-typical 
races of the same stock which appear to have been, like themselves, 
terrse geniti of the Archipelago, distinguished by their restless and 
ever-encroaching name. "By any standard of beauty which can be 



80 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

taken, from the Ganges to the Pillars of Hercules, the Malays must 
he pronounced as a homely race," — whose heau-ideal of cuticular 
charms (as Crawfurd says in his larger History) is summed up in the 
phrase " skin of virgin-gold color." In their physique, the Malays 
are neither Chinese nor Dravidians, neither Polynesians nor Mala- 
gasi, neither Oriental nor Occidental Negroes; hut as Dryden the 
poet sung (p. xvi) : — 

"Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen, 
Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen : — " 

in short, nothing else than Malays. For the specification of their 
language and its dialects, the " Grammar and Dictionary" is the 
source to which we must refer; but, what singularly commends 
Mr. Crawftjrd's analytical investigations to the ethnographer is, the 
careful method through which, by well-chosen and varied compara- 
tive vocabularies, he has succeeded in showing, how Malayan blood, 
language, and influence, decrease in the exact ratio that, from their 
continental peninsula of Malacca, as a starting point, their coloni- 
zing propensities have since widened the diameter between their 
own primitive cradle, and their present commercial factories, or 
piratical nuclei. Nor must it be forgotten that, upon many of the 
islands themselves, both large and small, there exist distinct types 
of men, independently of Malayan or other colonists on the sea- 
board, speaking distinct languages. Thus, in Sumatra, there are 4 
written, and 4 unwritten tongues, besides other barbarous idioms 
spoken in its vicinity : at Borneo, so far as is yet known of its un- 
explored interior, there are at least 9 ; at Celebes, several. At the 
same time that, according to Mr. Logan, each newly-discovered 
savage tribe, like the Orang Mintird, the Orang Benud, the Orang 
Muka Kuning, &c, amid the jungle-hidden creeks around Singa- 
pore, presents a new vocabulary. 

Being one of the few Englishmen, morally brave enough to avow, 
as well as sufficiently learned to sustain, by severely-scientific argu- 
ment (pp. ii-vii, and elsewhere), polygenistic doctrines on the origin 
of mankind, Mr. Crawfurd's ethnological opinions are entitled to 
the more respect from his fellow-philologues, inasmuch as — without 
dispute about a vague appellative, " Malayo-Polynesian," — his philo- 
sophic deductions must logically tally with those continental views, 
to which a Franco-Germanic utterance is given at the close of 
our section Hid. 

Upon the various systems of linguistic classification, through 
which each unprejudiced philologist — i. e., to the exclusion always 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 81 

of preconceived dogmas fabricated, as Koranic Arabs would say, fi aya- 
mena ed-djah'Uieli, "daring our days of ignorance" — defines his more 
or less scientific, but ever-individual, impressions, differences of 
opinion must inevitably ensue ; some scholars reasoning from one 
stand-point, others from another : nor would we, when closing this 
parenthesis about the term "Malayo- Polynesian," overlook the 
physiological fact indicated by Prof. Agassiz, 30 viz : that identities 
among types of men linguistically similar, whilst historically and 
ethnically different, do sometimes arise only from similarity in the 
internal " structure of the throat" — anatomical niceties imperceptible 
to the eye perhaps, but not the less distinctly impressive on an acute 
and experienced ear.] 

Of all the families of languages at present recognized on the sur- 
face of our globe, there only remains for us to examine the American 
tongues. Endeavor has been made to attach them to the Polynesian 
family ; but from these they essentially distinguish themselves, and 
we shall see presently that certain traits assimilate them, on the con- 
trary, to African languages. 

Let us signalize a primary fact. It is that, whilst the populations 
of the two Americas are far from offering a great homogeneity 
of physical characters, their languages, on the contrary, consti- 
tute a group which, as relates to grammar, affords an unity very 
remarkable. 

That which distinguishes all these tongues is a tendency, more 
apparent than that among any other linguistic family, to agglutination. 
The words are agglomerated through contraction, — by suppressing 
one or several syllables of the combined radicals — and the words 
thus formed become treated as if they were simple words, susceptible 
of being again employed and modified like these. This property has 
induced the giving to the languages of the ISTew "World the name of 
poly synthetical, — which M. F. Liebeb, has proposed to alter into that 
of olophrastic. 

Besides this characteristic, there are several others that, without 
being so absolute, seem nevertheless to be very significant. Thus, 
these idioms do not in general know our distinction of gender ; in 
lieu of recognizing a masculine and a feminine, they have an animate 
and an inanimate gender. I have said above, that there is one trait 
which is common to them and to divers idioms of Polynesia, as well 
as to the Hottentot tongues. It is the existence of two plurals (and 
sometimes of two duals), exclusive and inclusive, otherwise tei'med, 

80 Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1850, p. 31 : — Types of Mankind, p. 282. 

6 



82 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

particular and general. The exclusive plural, in certain dialects, 
applies itself to the orator, and to the community to which he 
belongs, by excluding the others ; whereas, in sundry dialects, this 
same plural applies to those in whose name one speaks, to the 
exclusion of the persons to whom one is addressing a discourse. 

One trait of the grammar of American languages, that has greatly 
struck the first Europeans who sought to grasp their rules, is what 
they have called transition. This process, otherwise intimately con- 
nected with polysynthetism, consists in dissolving the pronoun indi- 
cative of the subject, — no less than that one indicating the object, — 
into the verb, so as to compose but a single word. Hence it follows 
that no verb can be employed without its governing case (regime). 
The number of these transitions varies according to the languages, 
and the pronoun incorporates itself with the verb generally by suffixes. 
By means of a modification of the principal radical, American 
tongues arrive at rendering all the accessory or derived notions that 
attach themselves to the idea of verb. Hence arises a vast number 
of voies. These changes constitute all the riches of the New World's 
idioms. This abundance of changes is above all striking in the Al- 
gonquin, and in Dahkota, — the language of an important Sioux tribe. 
On the contrary, in the Moxo, — a tongue of South America, the conju- 
gations reduce themselves to one. Here we have a new trait of 
resemblance between the idioms of Africa and those of the ISTew 
World. 

A classification of American languages has been attempted. It is 
a difficult undertaking ; because, in general, amid populations that 
live by tribes exceedingly fracted, and in a savage state, words 
become extremely altered in passing from one tribe to another. New 
words are created with great facility ; and were one to take but the 
differences into account, it might be believed that these languages 
are fundamentally distinct. The erudite Swiss, long a distinguished 
citizen of the United States — successor, in philology, to a learned 
Franco- American, Duponceau — Mr. Gallatin, has found in North 
America alone some 37 families of tongues, comprising more than 
100 dialects ; and even then he was far from having exhausted all 
the idioms of that portion of the world. It is true that he embraces, 
within his classification, the Eskimaux and Athapascan idioms, which 
appertain, as well as certainly the former race, to the Ougro-Finnie 
stock, — otherwise termed the boreal branch. Among North Ameri- 
can families, those of the Algonquin, Iroquois, Cherokee, Choctaw and 
Sioux, are the most important; but, concerning the indigenous 
tongues spoken around the Rios, Gila and Colorado, philological 
science hitherto possesses only vague information. 



CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 83 

At the centre of America we meet with four families, viz : the 
family Quicho-Maya, of which the chief representatives are the idioms 
of Yucatan; — the second family is exhibited in the Otomi, which at 
first had been erroneously made a completely separate type, — the 
third is the Lenea family, principally spread over the territory of 
Honduras, — and lastly, the fourth family is represented by the 
Nahuatl, otherwise called the ancient Mexican ; of which we possess 
literary monuments written in a kind of hieroglyphics. 

The Quicken, or Quichoa — language of the Incas — comprehends 
several dialects, of which the principal is the Aymara. The Quichoa, 
of all the families of the ~Hew "World, possesses most prominently the 
polysynthetical character. The Guarani family, to which the Chilian 
attaches itself, manifests a very great grammatical development. It 
was spread throughout the south- and east of austral America, and 
was spoken over a vast expanse of territory. Finally, the two fami- 
lies, the Pampean or Moxo, and the Cardib, occupy, in the hierarchi- 
cal ladder of American idioms, the very lowest rungs. In these there 
is excessive simplicity, — for instance, in the G-alibi, spoken by savage 
tribes of the French Guyana, and which belongs to the Caribbean 
family. One finds in it neither gender nor case; the plural is ex- 
pressed simply by the addition of the word papo, signifying all, and 
serving at one and the same time for the noun as well as the verb. 
In this last part of a discourse, the persons are not discriminated ; 
and the same form acts in the plural, no less than in the singular, 
for the three persons. 

American languages have, then, also passed through very different 
phases of development; but, even when they have attained, as in 
Quichoa and the Quarani, a remarkable degree of elaboration, they 
have been unable, notwithstanding, to overcome the elementary 
forms upon which they had been scaffolded. 

In the presence of such existing testimonies, of this gradual 
development, it becomes, henceforth, impossible to conclude any- 
thing from those analogies signalized between American and 
African languages, as regards imagined filiation. The aspect of 
two vast linguistic groups, placed at distances so remote, might have 
engendered a supposition of some links of proximate relationship 
between the populations speaking them, if, in view of their physique, 
the Indians of the New World, and the negroes and Hottentots of 
Africa, were not so entirely different. But, seeing that we have 
established each floor (Stage) of linguistic civilization — if one may so 
speak — we cannot admit that these tongues have been transported 
from Africa to America, or, at least, that their grammar already 



84 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND 

governed the idioms spoken by such supposititious emigrants. Simi- 
litude between the two groups shows us merely, that the native abo- 
rigines of Africa and of America possessed an analogous faculty of 
language ; and that neither could rise above a certain level, which, at 
first sight, may have been taken for a common characteristic, and as 
a sign of filiation. 



section m. 

The sketch we have just given of the families of tongues spread 
over the globe's surface has led us to observe, that the linguistic 
families coincide (with tolerable exactitude) with the more trenched 
divisions of mankind. 

Each superior race of man is represented by two families of lan- 
guages corresponding to their largest brancbes, viz: the White race, 
or Caucasic, by the Indo-European and Semitic tongues ; — the Yellow 
race by the monosyllabic and the Ougro-Tartar tongues, otherwise 
called "Finno- Japonic." To the Black race correspond the tongues 
of Africa; — to the Red race, the tongues of America; — to the Malayo- 
Polynesian races, the tongues of that name; — to the Australian 
race, the idioms of Australasia. ITo more of homogeneity is beheld, 
however, amongst the languages spoken by those inferior races inha- 
biting Africa, America, Oceanica, or Australia. 

The multifarious crossings of these primitive races, — crossings 
that may be called those of the secondary race-floor — are represented 
by families that possess characteristics less demarcated, and which 
participate generally of the two families of idioms spoken by the 
races whose intermixture gave birth to them. 

The Dravidian languages partake of the Ougro-Tartar and the 
monosyllabic tongues. The Hamitic languages are intermediate 
between the Semitic and the African tongues. The Hottentot lan- 
guages hold to the African and the Polynesian tongues ; certain lan- 
guages of the Soodan offering, also, the same character, but with a 
predominance of Polynesian elements ; whereas it is the African 
element that preponderates in Hottentot idioms. 

The apparition of these grand linguistical formations is, therefore, 
as ancient as that of the races themselves. And, in fact, speech is 
with man as spontaneous as locomotion, — as the instinct of clothing 
and of arming oneself. This is what the Bible shows us in the 
abridged recital it gives of Creation.' God causes to pass before 
A-DaM, the-Man, all the animals and all the objects of the earth (as 



CLASSIFICATION OP TONGUES. 85 

it were, in a cosmorama), and the-Man gives to each a name. 31 It is 
impossible to declare more manifestly that speech (language) ia 
an innate and primitive gift. From the instant that man was created, 
he must have spoken, by virtue of the faculty he had received from 
God. 

The use of this faculty has also been as different among the 
diverse races of mankind as that of all other faculties. And, in the 
same manner that there have been races pastoral, agricultural, pisca- 
tory and hunting, — that there are populations grave, and populations 
volatile ; adroit and cunning tribes, as well as tribes stupid and shal- 
low — so there have been races with language developed and powerful, 
populations that have attained a high degree of perfection in speech ; 
whereas others have very quickly found their development arrested, 
— just, indeed, as there have been, and ever will be, races pro- 
gressive and races stationary. 

We are unable to pierce the mystery of the origins of humanity. 
"We are ignorant as to a process by which God formed man, and the 
Bible itself is mute in this respect. It neither resolves, nor indicates 
the difficulties inherent in, the first advent of our species. But, it ia 
very evident that, in speaking of mankind in general, — that is to 
say, of A-DaM; for such is the sense of the word — it designates, 
according to Oriental habits, the race by an individual : in precisely 
the same method that, in the ethnic geography of the children of 
Eoah [Genesis x), it represents an entire people by a single name. 
Thus, Genesis speaks to us only of the genus homo, which it personifies 
in an individual to whom it attributes the supposed instincts of the 
first men. This being at present settled, it cannot be concluded 
from biblical testimony that all human beings spoke one and the 
same tongue at the beginning, — any more than we can conclude 
that there had been but one primitive couple. 

From the origin there were different languages, as there were like- 
wise different tribes ; and from out of these primitive families issued 
all the idioms subsequently spread over the earth. Because, the 
faculty of speech was, at its origin, coetaneous with the birth of man- 
kind ; and linguistic types are not now formed, any more than new 
races of men, or new animals, are being created. Existing types be- 
become altered, modified. They cross amongst each other within 
certain limits, — and with the more facility according as they may 

81 Genesis, II, 19 : — " Jehovah-Elohim forma de terre tous les animaux des champs, tous 
les oiseaux du ciel, et les fit venir vers I'homme pour qu'il vit a, les nommer ; et comme 
I'homme nommerait une creature anime'e, tel devait etre son nom." — (Cahek's Hebrew text, 
L p. 8.) 



86 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 

already possess greater affinity. They become extinct and disap- 
pear: but that is all. The work of creation on our globe is 
terminated; and all the invisible dynamics which the Creator set 
in motion, in order to people this physical and moral world, may 
indeed preserve that which they have produced ; but I'dge du retour 
for them has arrived. They have become powerless and sterile 
for creations that are reserved, without doubt, for other worlds. 

A. M. 

Paris, Library of the Institute — April, 1856. 



ICONOGR APHIC RESEARCHES. 87 



GHAPTEK II. 

ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 

ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR ART ; 
BY FRANCIS PTJLSZKY. 



' Tedd a durva Scythat a Tiberishez, es 

A nagy R6ma fiat Bosphorus oblihez 

Barlang leszen amott a Capitolium 

'S itt uj' R6ma emelkedik." 
'Put the rude Scythian on the Tiber, 

And the son of great Rome on the Cimmerian coast, 

There the Capitol will become a den, 

And here rises a new Some." (Berzsenyi.) 



Letter to Mr. Geo. It. Cfliddon, and Dr. J. 0. Nott, on, the Races of 

Men and their Art. 
My Dear Sirs: 

Reading your " Types of Mankind," equally valuable for consci- 
entious research and sound criticism, I could not but be pleased with 
your felicitous idea of supporting ethnological propositions by the 
testimony of copious Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Chi- 
nese monuments, in order to prove the constancy of national types, 
during the historical period of antiquity, by authentic representa- 
tions. Blumenbach and Prichard only cursorily referred to ancient 
monuments; your publication was the first 1 to call Archaeology into 
the witness-box for cross-examination in the question of races and 

* If our work, published early in 1854, may take credit for having somewhat extended 
and popularized this method of research, the road had been widely opened, ten years pre- 
viously by Morton (Crania JEgypiiaca, Philada., 1844). Subsequently to Morton, the 
same method was applied with singular felicity by M. Courtet de l'Isle (Tableau ethno- 
graphique du Genre Humain; 8vo., Paris, 1849) ; but, as mentioned in "Types," (p. 724,) I 
was not aware of M. Codrtet's priority until the text of our book was entirely stereotyped. 
His volume has become so rare, that I was unable to procure a copy during my late stay 
at Paris, 1854-5. A portion, however, was originally published under the title of "Icono- 
graphie des races humaines," in the Illustration, Oct. and Nov., 1847: and another formed 
part of the interesting discussions of the Societe Elhnologiquc de Paris, on the " Distinctive 
Characteristics of the White and of the Black races;" Seance du 25 Juin, 1847. (See the 
Bulletin of that Society, parent of those in London and New York, Annee 1847, Tome lr, 
pp. 181-206, and 284.) G. R. G. 



88 



ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 



Fig. 1. 



nationalities. 2 But, whilst you judiciously selected the most charac- 
teristic reliefs of Egypt and Assyria from the classical works of 
Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, Botta, and Layard; all Etruscan, 
Roman, Hindoo, and American antiquities were excluded from the 
"Types;" and I felt somewhat disappointed when I found, that as to 
your Greek representations you were altogether mistaken. You 
published, on the whole, five busts 3 belonging strictly to the times 
and nations of classical antiquity, but there is scarcely one among 
them on which sound criticism could bestow an unconditional 
approval. 

You may find that I am rather hard upon you, as even your critic 
in the Athenaeum Francais* objected only to one of them. Still, ami- 
cus Nott, amicus GrLiDDON, sed magis arnica Veritas ; and I hope that 
if you have the patience to read my letter with attention, you will 
yourselves plead guilty. 

The busts which I am to review are the alleged portraits of Lycue- 
gus, the Spartan legislator, of Alexander the Great, of Eratos- 
thenes, of Hannibal, and of Juba I., king of ISTumidia. 

I. As to the great Lacedsemonian lawgiver, you borrowed his por- 
trait from Pouqueville, 5 who took it from 
Ennio Quirino Visconti. 6 It cannot be 
traced farther back. The celebrated 
Italian archaeologist, publishing that head 
of a marble statue in the Vatican, freely 
acknowledges that he has scarcely any 
authority for attributing it to Lycurgus, 
by saying that he thinks the statue might 
be a portrait of the famous one-eyed legis- 
lator, — inasmuch as the conformation of 
the left eye and cheek is different from 
the right side of the head ; and, according 
to him, such want of symmetry charac- 
terizes a man blind of one eye. 7 I leave 

1 Blumenbach read a lecture : De veterum urlificium anatomies perili<e laude limitanda, cele- 
branda vero eorum in charactere gentilitio ezprimendo accuratione, at Gottingen, on the 19th of 
March, 1823, but unhappily it never was published. The notice in the Gottingen Gelehrle 
Anze.igen 1823 (p. 1241,) mentions only that he dwelt upon the correctness of the represen- 
tations of negroes, Jews, and Persians, on ancient monuments; and remarked that no effigy 
of the Mongolian type has ever been found on them. Prichard devotes two pages (235 and 
236 of his lid volume), to the remains of Egyptian painting and sculpture ; but he ignores 
Rosellini's work, and quotes from the antiquated Denon and the Description de VEgypie. 

3 Types of Mankind, p. 104 and 136. 

4 Athencsum Francais, Paris, 25 March 1854, p. 264. 

» TJnivers pitloresque, Grece, pi. 84 ; — Types, p. 104, fig. 4. 

* Iconographie grecque, I. pi. VIII. 2. ' Ibid. p. 131 of the Milan edition. 




ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR ART. 89 

it altogether to your critical judgment whether such an argument is 
sufficient for baptizing the old statue and calling it Lycurgus, whilst 
the deformity of the face might he the result of the clumsiness or 
inadvertence of the sculptor, or might represent any other half-faced 
personage. But even had Visconti proved that the effigy in ques- 
tion was really meant for Lycurgus, being a copy of the statues men- 
tioned by Pausanias, 8 still, the features could not be taken for a real 
portrait, nor could they have any value for ethnology, since, impos- 
sible as it is to fix the date of Lycurgus accurately, it is universally 
agreed that he lived at the close of the heroic and before the dawn 
of the Instorical age, when art was nearly unknown to Greece. A 
chasm of at least three centuries separates him from the earliest 
reliefs and coins we possess. It is therefore preposterous to believe 
in portraits of Lycurgus in the present sense of the word. Accord- 
ingly, Visconti admits that the portrait in question was created (!) — 
like that of Homer, — on national traditions by artistic imagination. 
The Greeks, with their strongly developed feeling for beauty, were 
not at all shocked by such ideal portraits ; their artists, down to the 
time of Alexander the Macedonian ; and even beyond his epoch, did 
not care much for material likeness, and were only intent upon 
making the expression of the features answer to the traditional cha- 
racter of the person represented. Thus, for instance, they created 
the effigies of the " seven sages," and of JEsopus, which once adorned 
the Villa of Cassius, and now form one of the chief attractions of 
the Villa Albani at Rome. 9 The most celebrated of those imaginary 
portraits is the magnificent bust of Homer, 10 equally known in 
antiquity and in modern times ; for Pliny 11 remarks, speaking of this 
custom, that " even effigies which do not exist, are invented, and 
excite the desire to know the features not transmitted, as is the case 
with Homer." Pausanias proves that in his time there were portraits 
of Lycurgus existing ; of course invented in a similar way : but we 
may safely state that, even the created effigies of the old law-giver 
were not of a constant type. The Spartans, at the epoch of their 
complete subjection to Rome, began to adorn their copper coins with 
the head of Lycurgus, inscribing them with his name in order that 
no mistake should be possible ; but Visconti, who published two of 
them, 12 says, that they do not resemble one another. 

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that there is no certainty and 
but little probability about the head published by you, as to its 

• Pausanias, lib. iii. c. 14. 9 Visconti, Iconographie grecque, 1 pi. ix. x. xi. xii. 

" The best of them is at the Studj at Naples; a good one in the British Museum, 
li Historia Natures, xxxv. \ 2. " Visconti, Icon, gr., 1 pi. viii. 5, 6. 



90 



ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 




having ever, before Visconti, been imagined to represent Lycurgus ; 
and that in no case could it be taken for anything else than a fancy- 
portrait, not more to be trusted than the statue of Columbus, 
commonly called the " ninepin-player," before your Capitol, or the 
relief portrait of Daniel Boone in the Rotunda at Washington. 
II. Tour portrait of Alexander the Great, likewise from Pou- 
queville, 13 is by far more authentic than the 
pretended likeness of Lycurgus. The origi- 
nal marble bust, of which you give a copy, is 
now placed in the Louvre at Paris, as a me- 
morial of Napoleon I. ; who received it as a 
present from the Spanish Ambassador, the 
Chevalier dAzara. The accomplished Che- 
valier caused a panegyrical dedicatory in- 
scription to be sculptured on the side of this 
bust, before presenting it to the modern 
Alexander. The Bourbons, unconsciously 
following the traditions of the Emperor Cara- 
calla, and of several Egyptian Pharaohs, or- 
dered the mention of their obnoxious prede- 
cessor to be obliterated on this monument ; but traces of the destroyed 
inscription sufficiently record the resentment and bad taste of those 
who had " rien oublie ni rien appris." The bust was originally found 
near Tivoli, the ancient Tibur, in the year 1779, bearing the inscrip- 
tion 

AAEIANAP02 

*iAinnnY 

MAKEA 

The form of the letters shows, according to Visconti," that this 
excellent piece of sculpture could not have been contemporaneous 
with the conqueror of Persia ; and that it probably belongs to the 
last epoch of the Roman Republic, or to the beginning of the Empire. 
Still, as the features of the Macedonian king were in his life-time 
immortalized by such eminent artists as Apelles, Pyrgoteles and 
Lysippus ; and since his portraits served as seals and emblems of coins 
soon after his death, it may seem tolerably certain, that the marble 
bust in question gives us really the likeness of the conqueror. Yet 
there remains one difficulty about it. The bust having been found 
in a mutilated state, the broken nose was restored, without consulting 
the coins of Lysimachus, one of the generals and successors of 
Alexander, who had the portrait of his late master put on them. 



1 Grece, pi. 85 -.—Types, p. 104, fig. 



11 Icon, grecque, II. page 47. 



ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR ART. 91 

Thus the restoration altered the features a little, a somewhat longer 
nose being attached to the bust, than the earlier effigies on coins, 
statues, and mosaics warrant. "With the slight exception, therefore, 
that the tip of the nose is too long and too pointed, the portrait in 
the "Types" ought to satisfy sound criticism. Still, Staatsrath 
Koehler, the renowned but presumptuous Russian archaeologist, 
hypercritically rejects the Azara-bust, as of no use to iconography; 15 
but as he omits the reasons for his harsh sentence, he must allow us 
to be so malicious, and to infer, from the date of his essay, 16 written 
during the Russo-Persian war, that he was disappointed at not being 
able to discover a likeness between the bust of the great Macedonian 
and the would-be inheritor of his schemes, the late Czar Nicholas : 
at the same time that French archaeologists maintain that Alexander, 
Augustus, and Ramesses, bear a striking likeness to Napoleon I. 

But if the Russian archaeologist went too far on the side of hyper- 
criticism, the author of "Inscriptions of the British Museum," and 
the arranger of the Egyptian Court in the Sydenham Crystal Palace, 
err considerably more on the other side ; having been taken in by 
one of the most barefaced archaeological impostures of modern 
times. In 1850, a 4to volume (360 pages text and LXI plates) was 
published at Didot's by Mons. J. Barrois, under the suspicious title 
of " Dactylologie et Langage Primitif;" in which pi. LLX gives 
"the portrait of Alexander taken during his life (represents de son 
vivant) from a bas-relief painted in four colours by Apelles, (!), and 
found in 1844 under the sand of a subterraneous tomb at Cercasore 
on the Nile." Since this wonderful book was printed for private 
circulation, and did not get into the book-market, criticism remained 
silent; but the portrait having been introduced into the Crystal 
Palace, we must protest against the clumsy forgery which attributes 
an Egyptian bas-relief to Apelles the Greek painter. Besides, though 
its style is Pharaonic, the eye is foreshortened in the Greek way ; 
the Egyptian cartouche is false ; whilst the Greek inscription, 
wrongly spelt, 17 is neither Egyptian nor Greek, and the form of its 
letters is partly archaic, partly Latin. I was shocked at the very 
first sight of such a cast exhibited among copies of the best remains 
of Egypt ; and afterwards learned from Mr. Gliddon, that it is gene- 
rally known in Paris, how the relief (with its companion, which 
purports to represent Heph^estion), had been manufactured ex- 

" Abhandlung iiber die geschniltenen Steine, &o. St. Petersburg, 1851, p. 10, — referring 
to his essay in Bottiger's Archceologie und Kunst, Band 1, page 13. 
11 The inscription runs as follows : 

ALEK^ANDP* 
YIO* AMOYN* 



92 



ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 



Fig. 3. 




pressly to entrap M. Barrois, the wealthy amateur, who does not 
believe at all in Champollion, and consequently bought it for 6000 
francs. It was certainly beyond the expectation of the French 
forgers that they should cheat two English archaeologists also. 
IH. Eratosthenes of Cyrene in Africa, the famed Greek librarian 
of king Ptolemy Evergetes at Alexandria, the 
greatest Astronomer, Geographer, and Chrono- 
logist of his time, would indeed deserve a place 
of honor in any ethnographical publication ; but, 
unhappily, there exists no antique likeness of 
that eminent man, although the Chevalier Bunsen 
prefixed the ideal drawing of a Greek bust to the 
second volume of his "JEgyptens Stelle in der 
"Weltgeschichte." 18 Yet this effigy is altogether a 
modern fancy -portrait, which originates solely 
from the desire of the learned Chevalier to ex- 
press his veneration for the Sage of Cyrene. I 
have suspected that it is not through accident, but 
by design, that the snub-nose of the German edition has been twisted 

into a somewhat aquiline form for 
Longman's English translation of 
the same work. Possibly, Bun- 
sen, in fear lest his authority might 
introduce a false Eratosthenes into 
good society — as really has hap- 
pened in the " Types," — took this 
indirect method of unmaking the 
creature of his own imagination. 

IV. The portrait of Hannibal 
was copied for the " Types," on the 
faith of the "Univers pittoresque," 
(Afrique ancienne, Carthage), a col- 
lection of several works by differ- 
ent authors of different merit. 
Thus, for instance, next to the 
description of Ancient Egypt by 
Champollion-Eigeac, and of China by Pauthier, we find Italy 
described by the shallow Artaud, and Greece by Pouqueville. 
However, the alleged portrait of the Carthaginian hero did not 
answer your ethnographic expectations in any way, not being of the 



Fig. 4. 




18 Hamburg, 1845, frontispiece. Compare the one in Egypt's Place in Ufiiversal History, 
London, 1854, II., and p. xxi. The same genius for invention has supplied Arehfeology 
■with an equally-authentic portrait of Manetho: — Op. cit., Drittes Buck, frontispiece. 



OK ETTIAN RACES AND THEIR ART. 93 

Shemitic cast; and you recognized at once the highest Caucasian 
type so strongly marked, in his face as to lead to the suggestion, 
" that if his father was a Phcenico-Carthaginian, one would suspect 
that his mother, as among the Ottomans and Persians of the present 
day, must have heen an imported white slave, or other female of the 
purest Japhetic race." 19 This remark, embodying an acknowledg- 
ment of the Japhetic cast of the features, was happily added to the 
"portrait;" which can he found on some elegant silver coins accom- 
panied by a Phoenician inscription. From the time of Fulvius 
Ursinus 20 it was always taken for the efUgy of Hannibal, until Pel- 
lerin, 21 and Eckhel, m proved that these coins are not Carthaginian, 
but Cilician and Phoenician. "In 1846," says the reviewer of 
"Types," in the Atheneeum Frangais, "the Due de Luynes found out 
that it was the portrait of a Satrap of the king of Persia, who 
governed Tarsus in the time of Xenophou; and thus," he adds, "in 
the effigy published by Messrs. Gliddon and Nott, type, country, 
epoch, and race, are all mistaken" ! M A sweeping conclusion indeed ; 
still, it is not complete enough ; seeing, we may add, that the reviewer 
himself is likewise mistaken. Had he studied the Essay of the Due 
de Luynes with sufficient care, he would have found that the head, 
formerly believed to be the effigy of Hannibal, and as such prefixed 
to most of the editions of Silius Italicus, is not at all a portrait, but 
the ideal representation of a hero ; since it is not only found on the 
silver coins of Dernes of Phoenicia (or rather, according to "W. H. 
Waddington, of Datames of Cilicia), 24 but likewise on the coins of 
Pharnabazus, the powerful Satrap of Phrygia and Lydia, son-in-law 
to Artaxerxes Mnemon. It cannot, therefore, be meant for either 
of them ; so much the less, as there is no example of any Satrap 
stamping coin with his own portrait. 

Visconti, in his Iconogrcvphie grecquef 5 attributes a totally different 
bust to Hannibal. Fully aware that the effigy on the above-men- 
tioned silver coins could not represent the illustrious Carthaginian, 
he did not like to lose the illusion that we possess such an interesting 
portrait; especially as the elder Pliny complains 25 that "two statues 
were erected to Hannibal in the city, since so many foreign nations 
had been received into communion with Pome, that all former dif- 
ferences between them were abolished." Accordingly, Visconti 
attributes a small bronze bust to the greatest enemy of the Romans ; 

■* Types of Mankind, p. 136, fig. 37; and Southern Quarterly Review, Charleston, S. C, Oct. 
1854, p. 294, note. M Atheneeum Francois, Mars, 1854, p. 264. 

M Imagines illustr. virorum, pi. 63. •* Atheneeum Frangais, Fevrier 1856, p. 12. 

" Recueil, iii. p. 59. ,s Vol. iii. pi. xvi. 

" Doctrina nummorum veterum, iii. p. 412. K Hist. Nat. xxxiv. \ 15. 



94 ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 

because, having been found at Pompeii together with the bust of 
Scipio Africanus, it might have been its companion. He discovers 
an African cast in the features of the bust, although he does not 
enable us to understand what African peculiarity he means ; and he 
forgets that Hannibal ought to portray the true Shemitic, not any 
African type. Visconti refers likewise to the peculiar head-dress of 
the bust, as being analogous to that of king Juba; but Juba was a 
Numidian, (inheriting some Berber blood, probably,) not a Cartha- 
ginian by lineage ; and the resemblance is altogether imaginary. 
Lastly, he identifies the features of the bronze with those of a fine 
bearded and helmeted head often found on gems, 27 and traditionally 
ascribed to Hannibal, because one of the copies bears evidently the 
half-effaced inscription HA . . . BA . .^ Unfortunately for Visconti, 
the gems and the bronze bust have not one single feature in common 
between them ; and we are even able to trace the origin of the tradi- 
tion and of the inscription mentioned by the renowned author of the 
" Iconographie " — to a rather modern date. There exists a cele- 
brated colossal marble statue in the ante-room of the Capitoline Mu- 
seum, which had always puzzled antiquaries. It represents a bearded 
warrior, with a stern and majestic countenance ; and would have 
been taken for Mars, did we not know, that all the statues of the god 
of war, with the exception of the earliest archaic representations, 
were beardless. Another designation was therefore wanted; and 
inasmuch as among the adornments of the magnificent armour of 
the colossus, two elephant heads occupy a pi'ominent place, he was 
called Pyrrhus, and sometimes Hannibal, — both generals having 
made use of elephants in their wars against Rome. The gems men- 
tioned by Visconti are evidently antique copies of the head of the 
Capitoline statue, from which they obtained the name. As to the 
inscription of the Florentine gem mentioned by Gori, we can affirm 
that it is a mediaeval forgery; because, on another repetition of the 
same head, 29 we find an analogous imposition, viz : the same Phoeni- 
cian letters which are struck on the Cilician coins of Datames, and 
were transferred from the medal to the gem by some mediseval 
engraver under the (false) belief that they read: "Hannibal." Be- 
sides, — the Capitoline statue and the gems resembling it are no por- 
traits at all ; they have ideal features, and represent Zeus Areios, the 
martial Jupiter, as beheld on the coins of the town Iasus in Caria, 30 

" Gori. Mus. Flor., 11, 12. ■ Gori, Inscriptions per Etrur., 1 pi. 10, p. 4. 

M Winokelmann, Pierres gravies du feu Baron Stosch, p. 415, nos. 43:— Raspe, Catalogue, 
p. 559, No. 9598. 

30 Streeee, Abhandl. der philologischen Classe der Munchner Academie, Theil 1, Tafel 4, 
No. 5. 



ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR ART. 



95 




no less than on several unpublished bronze statuettes in different 
collections. 

V. It is more difficult to object to the portrait of Juba I., king of 
Nuniidia ; the original of the head published by you 31 being the type 
of a silver coin which bears the 

Roman inscription " Juba Rex." Flg ' 5- 

Still, an anonymous archaeologist, 
(Steinbiichel,) 32 suggests, that this ef- 
figy, with its peculiar African head- 
dress, might represent an African Ju- 
piter, rather than a king, since his 
features are somewhat ideal, and the 
sceptre on the shoulder of the bust is 
an attribute of Jupiter, or of Juno, 
exceptionally only given to kings. 
As your object in exhibiting the por- 
trait of Juba was principally to show, 
to some illiterate Philagthiopians, that 
the inhabitants of Northern Africa 
were not negroes, the explanation of 

Steinbiichel becomes a still stronger argument for your views. If 
it can be maintained, then the published head is not the effigy of an 
individual Mauritanian king, by descent and marriage closely allied 
to several Greek dynasties (for instance, to the Ptolemies), but is the 
representative type of the population of the northern shores of 
Africa ; and the slight modification of the Arab features, observed in 
his face, becomes, therefore, a new argument for the affinity of Ber- 
ber and Shemitic races. The peculiar head-dress of the bust is men- 
tioned as African by Strabo, 33 who says that the same costume pre- 
vailed all along the northern coast of Africa up to Egypt, where it 
borders on Libya. Silius Italicus describes it very characteristically 
as a rigid bonnet formed by long hair overshadowing the forehead. 34 
We see it on the triumphal arch of the Emperor Constantine, as dis- 
tinguishing the Numklian auxiliary horsemen ; 35 and it seems that it 
extended even beyond the limits mentioned by Strabo, since it is 
found upon Egyptian reliefs representing Nubians as well as full- 
blooded Negroes ; for instance, compare "Types," page 249, and figs. 
166, 167, 168, 169, 170, and 171. 

VI. Besides these effigies belonging to the domain of Greek art, 

31 Types of Mankind, p. 136, fig. 38: — Afrique Ancienne, Carthage. 
ffl Katalog einer Sammlung geschnittener Steine, Wien, 1834, p. 11, No. 144. 
33 Strabo, xvii. p. 528. *■ Belloki, Arcus triumph. 

" Pcnicorum, lib. 1, v. 404 




96 ICONOGRAPHIC RESEARCHES 

we find in the " Types" 36 the Egyptian portrait of the famous Cleo- 
patra, which undoubtedly gives us a most charming effigy of this 

refined, sensual, intriguing Queen; 
Fi s- 6 - last scion of an illustrious Mace- 

donian race, who had witnessed at 
her feet Julius Csesar and Mark An- 
tony, and who for a short time might 
well have believed herself the mis- 
tress of the Eastern world.' Never- 
theless, doing full justice to the 
Egyptian artist, we cannot help re- 
marking that, though all the Egyp- 
tian effigies of this Queen, through- 
out her ancient realm, resemble one 
another perfectly — just as the por- 
trait of Queen Victoria has remained 
entirely unaltered on all her gold sovereigns for the last twenty 
years, — Cleopatra's Greek coins show a female head of entirely dif- 
ferent character ; which, if really her portrait, gives us but a poor idea 
of the taste either of Julius Csesar or of M. Antony. This difference 
between the Greek coins and Egyptian effigies, common to all the 
Ptolemies, is rather puzzling, and has until now not yet been satis- 
factorily explained; but Lepsius is expected to treat this question 
fully and frankly in the monographic portion of his great publica- 
tion. 17 In the mean time it is only fair to remark, that the native 
Egyptian portraits of some of these kings, ex. gr. Physcon, agree 
far better with their historical character, than do their effigies on the 
Greek coins ; which are all somewhat idealized, until we reach this 
last Cleopatra, who was evidently a much finer specimen of a Queen 
in reality, than she appears on her medals. 

Having done the work of demolition to my best abilities, allow 
me now to review the human races in respect to their aptitude for 
Art, and to inquire into the distinct and typical characteristics of 
national art among the different types of men, — a study that will 
establish the following facts : 

I. — ■ That whilst some races are altogether unfit for imitative art, 
others are by nature artistical in different degrees : 

II. — That the art of those nations which excelled in painting and 
sculpture, was often indigenous and always national"; losing not 

36 Op.cit., p. 104, fig. 8 : — Rosellini, Monumenti dell' Egitto, M. R., XXII., fig. 82. I 
notice your judicious alteration of the eye. 

" Cf., in the interim, Lepsius, Veber einigeErgebnisseder JEgyptischen Denkmaler fur die 
Kennlniss der Ptolemiiergeschichte, Berlin, 1853, pp. 26, 29, 52. 



ON HUMAN RACES AND THEIR ART. 97 

only its type but likewise its excellence by imitating the art of other 
nations : 

HI. — That imitative art, derived from intercourse with, or con- 
quest by, artistic races, remained barren, and never attained any 
degree of eminence, — that it never survived the external relations to 
which it owed its origin, and died out as soon as intercourse ceased, 
or when the artistic conquerors became amalgamated with the 
unartistic conquered race : 

' IV. — That painting and sculpture are always the result of a pecu- 
liar artistical endowment of certain races, which cannot be imparted 
by instruction to unartistical nations. This fitness, or aptitude for 
art seems altogether to be independent of the mental culture and 
civilization of a people ; and no civil or religious prohibitions can 
destroy the natural impulse of an artistical race to express its feelings 
in pictures, statuary, and reliefs. 

Tours, very truly, 

F. P. 

London, St. Alban's Villas, Highqate Rise, 
October, 1856. 



98 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



I. — GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

" Iconoqraphia statuas onmis generis, protomas, picturas, nrasivaque 
opera describit. Hanc sexcenti celebres opifices olim coluerunt. Imaginum 
amove, inquit Plinius, ftagrasse quosdam testes sunt el Atticus ills Ciceronis, edito 
de his volumine, et Marcus Varro benignissimo invento insertis voluminum suorum 
Joscundilati, nan nominibus tanium septingeniorum illustrium, sed et aliquo modo 
imaginibus, non passus intercidere figuras, aut vetustatem cevi contra homines 
valere." (Fabricius, Bibliographia Anliq., 1716, p. 124.) 

"Whenever the metaphysical Germans speculate about the philo- 
sophy of history, they invariably draw a broad distinction between 
the progressive races (Culturvolker) — to whom mankind is indebted 
for civilization, for the advancement of sciences, for all the forms of 
political administration of society, and for the moral elevation of 
the soul, — and the passive races, who scarcely possess any history of 
their own. All the white and yellow, and a few brown and red 
nations, are put down among the former; the majority of the 
Browns, the hunter-tribes of the Reds, and all the Blacks, being 
classed among the latter. But again, among the progressive races 
there is a very remarkable difference as regards their part in history. 
The Egyptians and Assyrians, the Shemitic races of Phoenicia, 
Palestine and Arabia, the Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, 
and lastly the Teutonic and neo-Latin nations, whether pure or 
blended with one another and with Celtic elements, took in succes- 
sion the lead of mankind ; whilst the pure Celts, the Sclavonians, 
the Einnie, Turkoman, Tartar and Berber races, remained in the 
background. "We need not say that, going one step farther, we find 
the mixed populations of Great Britain and of North America 
(commonly but wrongly called the Anglo-Saxon race), and the equally 
mixed population of France, to claim to be at the head of the 
modern progressive races ; scarcely to admit the equality of the Ger- 
man proper; and to be fully convinced of their own superiority over 
Italians and Spaniards, Dutch and Scandinavians, Celts and Scla- 
vonians, Hungarians and Einns, rejecting altogether the pretensions 
of Turks, Arabs, Persians and Hindoos, to civilization. This scale 
of national inequality has evidently been construed with regard to 
the political power, the commercial spirit, the literary activity, and 
the application of the results of science to manufactural industry 
among the different races. Considered from the point of view of 
imitative Art, — of painting and sculpture, — the result will be some- 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 99 

what different : and whilst it is certain that art has never flourished 
but among the progressive races, we shall find that nations to whom 
we are indebted for some of the most important discoveries, and to 
the highest truths revealed to mankind, are altogether deficient in 
art, — as, for instance, the Shemites without exception ; that others, 
although wielding the most extensive political power, such as the 
Romans of old, the Scandinavian Northmen, the Anglo-Saxons, the 
Sclavonic races, never attained a high development of painting and 
sculpture, and were surpassed by the Greeks of yore, and by the 
Italians and Spaniards, the Germans and Dutch. History teaches 
us that eminence in painting and sculpture is not the result of either 
high mental culture or political power, and that it does not always 
accompany the refinement and wealth of nations. "We find it growing 
out of a peculiar disposition of some nations, predestined as it were for 
art; whilst other races, living under the same social, climatic, and 
political conditions, never rise artistically to represent the outward 
world in colors or in plastic forms. And again, among the artistical 
nations we meet with the most remarkable differences in treating 
the same subjects. Some strive for the most scrupulous reproduc- 
tion of nature, and cling to faithful imitation; others are creative, 
embellishing whatever they touch : some show a deep understanding 
and love of nature ; others concentrate their power exclusively on 
the representation of the human body : some excel by the brilliancy 
and harmony of their coloring ; others charm by their correctness in 
plastical forms : but all of them express their nationality, their pecu- 
liar relation to God, nature and mankind, throughout their works. 
Therefore, even an inexperienced eye catches the difference between 
Egyptian and Assyrian, Indian and Chinese, Greek and Etruscan, 
Italian and German, French and Spanish, art: and the artistically- 
educated student feels no difficulty in discriminating the minute 
distinctions of schools, in each national art ; and generally discovers 
any attempt at forging pictures and statues. The inherent and 
indelible nationality of every monument of art is, in fact, the only 
safeguard against imposition ; since it is just as impossible for 
Gibson or Powers to sculpture an antique statue, and for Sir Charles 
Eastlake or Mr. Ingres to paint a Eaphael (or even a Carlo Dolce, or 
any second-rate Italian picture), as it would have been impossible for 
Alfieri to write a play of Shakespeare, and for any New Englander to 
become the author of a tragedy which could pass for the work of 
Corneille. Still, to establish the fact that art is always national and 
not cosmopolitan, we must pass in review the great artistic races 
from the time of the Egyptian pyramids down to our own days — a 
period of some five thousand years. 



100 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



II. — EGYPTIAN ART. 

AiiyvjMovS' Isvai, ho7a>%riv bhbv o^yaxiriv it. 

(Homer, Odvss., iv, 481.) 
"It only remains to say "with Homer, 
To visit Egypt's land, a long and dangerous way." 

(Strabo, lib. xvii.) 

The earliest of all monuments of art carry us back to the cradle of 
our civilization, Egypt, of which we are scarcely accustomed suffi- 
ciently to appreciate the real importance to the history of mankind. 
We speak here not only of its political power and high culture under 
the Pharaohs, nor only of the literary labors of the critical Alexan- 
drines under those Ptolemies who were fond to be protectors of 
Greek science ; but we allude likewise to the fact that, long after 
Egypt had merged into the Roman empire, became converted to 
Christianity, and lost all tradition of independence, still its peculiar 
national character was not swamped, nor its tough energy broken. 
It manifested itself strongly enough in the Athanasian controversy, 
in the Monophysite schism, in the many saints and legends of Chris- 
tian Egypt, and in the most important establishment of anachoret 
and monastic rule which originated in the Thebais, and thence 
spread all over the world, as an evidence of the vitality of that 
nation and of the indelibility of its moral type. 

At the very dawn of history we meet in Egypt with statues and 
bas-reliefs which, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions, are 
certainly contemporaneous with the builders of the pyramids ; 
though it is rather difficult to designate the precise century before 
our era to which they belong, because the Egyptians made no use of 
any conventional system or astronomical cyclus for their Chronology. 
Mariette's discoveries in the Serapeum at Memphis have proved 
that no Apis-cyclus (equal to 25 years) was ever known to the Egyp- 
tians, 38 as formerly believed by scholars from the interpretation of a 
passage in Plutarch. As to the Sothiae cyclus, it was certainly 
known, but its use for chronology remains more than doubtful. 39 
The Egyptians possessed no historical era ; they dated their public 
documents by the years of each king's reign. With such a 
system the least interruption of the dates vitiates all the series. 

38 Mariette, Renseignments sur les soixanie-quatre Apis, in the Bui. archeol. de V Aihenaum 
Franqaia, May- — Nov., 1855: — Alfred Maury, Des travaux modernes sur l'Egypte 
Ancienne;" Revue des Deux 3Iondes, Sept., 1855, pp. 1060-3. 

39 Buhsen (JEgyptens Stelle, iii. p. 121, seqq.) tries to prove a Sothiao Era of Menephthah ; 
but is not borne out by any astronomical dates on the monuments. Vide also the critical 
discoveries of Biot, infra, Chap. V. 



GENERAL REMARKS OK ICONOGRAPHY. 101 

Unfortunately for our knowledge of Egyptian chronology, 40 the list 
of Dynasties by Manetho has reached us only in mutilated extracts, 
and the ciphers annexed to the names of the sovereigns have evi- 
dently been tampered with. They are not the same in the several 
extracts of Eusebius, Syncellus, and Africanus ; nor do they tally 
with the original hieroglyphic documents. So much, notwithstand- 
ing, we can say with mathematical certainty, — now that the com- 
plete chronology of the XXUhd, or Bubastite, Dynasty has been 
reconstructed by Mariette from the documents of the Serapeum at 
Memphis, — that the 'first year of the reign of Psammeticus I., 
answers to the 94th year of the era of JVabonassar, or to the Julian 
year 654 B. C. The same series of documents places the beginning 
of the reign of Tirhaka, — ■ ally to king Hezekiah against Senna- 
cherib of Assyria, — towards 695 B. C. 41 But here the dates may be 
already uncertain to the extent of one or two years ; and beyond 
them the consecutive series of precise numerals ceases altogether. 
Some further dates have been astronomically determined, but the 
intermediate figures cannot be taken for more than approximate. 
For the XXJJnd dynasty we obtain a synchronism, and a means of 
rectifying chronology, through the conquest of Jerusalem by She- 
shonk L, which happened in the 5th year of Behoboam, king of 
Judah. 43 But even this synchronism does not yield an exact date, 
inasmuch as the chronology of the Book of Kings presents some 
difficulties not yet satisfactorily resolved. 43 Accordingly, Newman 
places the capture of Jerusalem in the year 950 B. C. ; 44 Bunsen in 
the year 962 ; 45 and "Winer in the year 970. 46 At any rate, it is certain 
that king Sheshonk began to reign before the middle of the tenth 
century, B. C. 

An astronomical fact, the heliacal rising of the dog-star, under 
Harnesses JJJ., of the XXth dynasty, recorded in a hieroglyphical in- 
scription at Thebes, defines the epoch of this king, and assigns his 
place, according to the calculation of M. Biot, to the 13th century B. 
C. ; or just to the same period which had been ascribed to him before 
the discovery of this inscription, solely on the approximating calcula- 
tion of the lists as rectified by the monuments. 

40 See for the following, principally De Rouse's Notice Sommaire, Muse'e de Louvre, p. 
19 seqq. 

41 The Hebrew chronology makes it nearer to B. C. 710, and is scarcely reconcilable with 
the Egyptian computation about this synchronism. 

42 Cf. Brugsch, Reiseberichte aus jEgypten. &c, Berlin, 1855 — "Die Halle der Bubas- 
titen-Konigs " at Karnac, pp. 141-4. 

43 Newman, History of the Hebrew Monarchy — Appendix to Chapter IV., on Chronology. 

44 Op. cit. p. 151 and 160. « ^gyptens Stelle, iii. p. 122. 

46 Biblisches Woerterbuch, voce Israel. So likewise Sharpe, Historic Notes on the Books of 
the 0. and N. Testaments, London, 1854, pp. 04, 88. 



102 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

For the XLXth dynasty, we have seemingly again a synchronism, 
that of Moses with Ramesses LT., and with Menephthah LT. ; hut it is 
of little value for exact dates, hecause the duration of the govern- 
ment of the Hebrews by their Judges is very uncertain. Biot's 
astronomical calculation is more valuable, with the aid of which we 
may establish that Seti I., father of Ramesses the great, lived about 
1500 B. C — [say 15th century B. 0.]; and hence that the XVIIth 
dynasty began to reign towards the eighteenth century B. C. Never- 
theless, as the Vicomte de Rouge, (whose authority we follow in 
preference to other Egyptologists, since he expresses himself most 
cautiously in dealing with chronological figures, and avoids hypo- 
theses) says, "it would not be astonishing if we should be here 
mistaken to the extent of one or two centuries, inasmuch as the 
historical documents are vitiated, and the hieroglyphical monuments 
incomplete." 

"Thus we have reached," continues de Rouge, "the time of the 
expulsion of the Shepherds, beyond whom no certain calculation is 
as yet possible from the monuments known. The texts do not agree 
how long these terrible guests occupied and ravaged Egypt, and the 
monuments are silent about them. However, their domination 
lasted for a long time, since several dynasties succeeded one another 
before the deliverance, and that is all we know about it. ISTor are 
we better informed concerning the duration of the first empire, and 
we have no certain means for measuring the age of those pyramids 
which bear evidence of the grandeur of the first Egypt. Neverthe- 
less, if we remember that the generations which built them are 
separated from our era, first by the eighteen centuries of the second 
empire, then by the very long period of the Asiatic invasion, and 
lastly by several dynasties of numerous powerful kings, the age of 
the pyramids will not lose anything of its majesty in the eyes of the 
historian, although he be unable to fix it with exact precision." 

It is to such an early period of the history of mankind that some 
of the statues and reliefs of Egypt can now be traced back with cer- 
tainty; and even they do not present us with the rudiments of an 
infantine art, but are actually specimens of the highest artistic char- 
acter. Like Minerva springing forth from the head of Jupiter, a 
full-grown armed virgin, Art in Egypt appears, in the very earliest 
monuments, fully developed, — archaic in some respects, but not at 
all barbarous. 

Through the kindness of MM. de Rouge", Mariette, Deveria, and 
Salzmann, and of Chev. Lepsius at Berlin, and their regard for Mr. 
Gliddon, we are enabled to publish a series of royal and princely 
effigies of the first or Old Empire, carefully copied, often photographi- 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 103 

cally, from these original statues and reliefs at the Louvre and other 
Museums. They are the earliest monuments of human art known 
to us ; being portraits of the Egyptian aristocracy at a time preceding- 
Abraham by many centuries. They enable us to form a correct idea 
of Egyptian art in its first phasis, before it became fettered by a 
traditionary hieratic type. In an ethnological respect, they give us 
the true features of the original Egyptians : and it is very remarkable 
that many statues and reliefs, later by more than two thousand 
years, bear exactly the same character; that, again, two thousand 
years subsequently have not changed the national type, — the Fellah 
(peasant) of the present day resembling his ancestors of fifty cen- 
turies ago, viz : the builders of the pyramids, so closely, that his 
Nilotic pedigree never can be seriously questioned henceforward. 

The character of the Egyptian race is most distinctly expressed 
upon its monuments throughout all the phases of its history ; and 
these sculptures of the IVth dynasty differ from those of later ages 
merely in details, not in spirit. Ernest Kenan, the great Shemitic 
philologue, describes that character in the following words: 

"The earliest [Cushite and Hamitic] civilizations stamped with a 
character peculiarly materialistic ; the religious and poetical instincts 
little developed; the artistical feeling rather weak; but the senti- 
ment of elegance very refined ; a great aptitude for handicraft, and 
for mathematical and astronomical sciences; literature practically 
exact, but without idealism; the mind positive, bent on business, 
welfare, and the pleasures ; neither public spirit nor political life ; 
on the contrary, a most elaborate civil administration, such as Euro- 
pean nations never beeame acquainted with, until the Roman epoch, 
and in our modern times." *' 

The Egyptians were eminently a practical people, of so little 
imagination, that in religion they conceived no heroic mythology. 
Whilst their gods were personified abstractions, all of them, with 
the only exception of the Osirian group, stand without life or history. 
In literature the Egyptians never rose above dry historical annals, 
religious hymns, proverbial precepts, poetical panegyrics, and liturgi- 
cal compositions. Epic and dramatic poetry was feeble, 48 romance 

47 Histoire et Systeme compare des Langues Semiliques, Paris, 1855; Ie. partie, p. 474. 

^ The publication of M. de Rough's critical translation of the Sallier Papyrus, containing 
the poetic recital of the Wars of Ramses, 14th century, B. C, against the Asiatic Sheta, or 
Kheia (recently read to the Imperial Institute), will prove that the metrical style of these 
Egyptian canticles frequently resembles Hebrew psalmody. Meanwhile, see some brief 
specimens of hieroglyphical poetry in Birch, Crystal Palace Catalogue, Egypt, 1856 ; pp. 
266-8. 

3 



104 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

simple, 49 philosophical speculation tame, 50 whilst critical history seems 
to have been unknown to them. Induction teaches us that the art 
of such a race must be analogous ; truthful, but narrow ; practical, 
but of no high pretensions; and indeed we find, upon close observa- 
tion, that it displays very little variety in its forms ; but within its 
narrow range it is distinguished, however, by the utmost fidelity and 
truthfulness. Ideal heroic types are entirely foreign to Egyptian art; 
we find scarcely any scenes purely mythological, in the abstract sense 
of the term (that is, as admired in Hellenic and Etruscan art), among 
their numerous reliefs or paintings ; the representations of godhead 
and subordinate divinities being always brought into connexion with 
sacrifices and oblations, which almost seem to have been the only 
object of the nation's religion. The king, his pomp, processions, 
and battles, and the individual life, daily occupations, sports and 
pastimes of the Egyptians, remain the favourite subjects of the 
artists who, for more than two thousand years of routine, constantly 
returned to that source, without ever exhausting it, always marking 
their composition with the stamp of truth, and preserving the great- 
est regard for individuality. Accordingly, the statues, whenever 
they represent men, and not gods, are portraits intended to give 
the real, and not the embellished and idealized features of the men 
represented. But, whilst we meet with the greatest variety in 
respect to the faces, the posture of- the statues remains altogether 
stereotyped during all the times of Egyptian history. 

Statuary had, in the valley of the Nile, very few forms of expres- 
sion ; about six or seven, which were repeated over and over again, 
all of them of the most rigid symmetry, without any movement. No 
passion ever enlivened the earnest features, no emotion of the soul 
disturbed the decent composure and archaic dignity imparted by the 
Egyptian sculptor. "No warrior was sculptured in the various atti- 
tudes of attack and defence; no wrestler, no discobolus, no pugilist 
exhibited the grace, the vigour, the muscular action of a man ; nor 

49 As a sample, see De Rough's French rendering of a hieratic payprus which presents 
sundry curious analogies with the story of Joseph, — Revue Archeologique, 1852; vol. ix., 
pp. 385-97. 

60 To judge, that is, by the "Book of the Dead," (Lepsittb, Todtenbuch der JEgypter nach 
dem Hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin, Leipzig, 4to, 1842) or as Bkugsch (Sai'-an-Sinsin, sive 
Liber Metempsychosis veterum JEgypliorum, Berlin, 4to, 1851, p. 42) restores Champollion's 
name for it, the "Funereal Ritual," — wherein, amid the recondite puerilities of a celestial 
lodge, with its ordeals, quaint pass-words, and ministering demons, it is evident that an 
Egyptian's idea of a "Future State" in Heaven never soared above aspirations for a repe- 
tition of his terrestrial life in Egypt itself! Be it noted here that M. de Rouge 1 has found 
the chapter " On life after death" on a monument of the XHth dynasty ; thereby establish- 
ing the existence of large portions of this Ritual in ante-Abrahamic days. 



GENERAL REMARKS OK ICONOGRAPHY. 105 

were the beauties, the feeling, and the elegance of female forms dis- 
played in stone : all was made to conform to the same invariable 
model, which confined the human figure to a few conventional 
postures." 51 

Of groups they knew only two, both of them most characteristic. 
Sometimes it is the husband with the wife, seated on the same chair 
on terms of perfect equality, holding one another's hand, or putting 
their arms round one another's waist, in sign of matrimonial happi- 
ness, evidently founded upon monogamy and perfect social equality 
between the sexes. 52 Sometimes again it is the husband, in his 
character of the head of the family, quietly sitting on a chair, accom- 
panied by the standing figures of his wife and children, sculptured 
as accessories, and considerably smaller in size than the husband 
and father. 

As to the single statues, they are either standing erect, the arms 
hanging down to the thighs in a straight line (though occasionally 
the right hand holding a sceptre, whip, or other tool, is raised to the 
chest), the left foot always stepping forward ; or the figure is seated, 
with the hands resting on the knees, or held across the breast. 
Another attitude is that of a person kneeling on the ground, and 
holding the shrine of some deity before him. The representation of 
a man squatting on the ground and resting his arms upon his knees, 
which are drawn up to his chin, is the most clumsy of the Egyptian 
forms, if the most natural posture to the race, being perpetuated to 
this day by the Fellaheen when resting themselves ; whilst the statues 
in a crouching position are the most graceful for their natural naivete. 
If we add to these few varieties of positions the stone coffins, imita- 
ting the mummy lying on its back, and swaddled in its clothes, we 
have exhausted all the forms of Egyptian statuary. Specimens of 
these six attitudes, all of them equally rigid and symmetrical, being 
found among the earliest monuments of the empire from the IVth 
to the XLTIth dynasty, it cannot be doubted that Egyptian statuary 
added no new form to their primitive sculptural types during the 
long lapse of nearly thirty centuries, which wrought certainly some 
variety into the details, but not upon the forms. In fact, the statue 

W Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, Popular account of the ancient Egyptians, II. 272. There 
are some partial exceptions to the rigor of this rule, such as the "Wrestlers at Benihassan," 
the "Musicians at Tel-el-amarna," "Ramesses playing chess at Medeenct-Haboo," the 
same monarch "spearing the Scythian chief" at Aboosimbel, an occasional group in grand 
battle-tableaux, various scenes of negro captives, &c. ; but they appear to be accidental, 
or perhaps instinctive, efforts of individual artists to escape from the conventional trammels 
prescribed by theocratic art. In the folio plates of Rosellini, Champollion, Cailleaud, Prisse, 
and Lepsius — especially the last two authorities — such instances may be found. 

52 Idem, II. 224. 



106 GENERAL EEMAEKS ON ICONOGEAPHT. 

was in Egypt never emancipated from architecture. 53 It was sculp- 
tured for a certain and determinate place, always in connection with 
a temple, palace, or sepulchre, of which it became a subservient 
ornamental portion, an architectural member as it were, like the pair 
of obelisks placed ever in front of the propyleia, or the columns sup- 
porting a pronaos. This poverty of forms, and their constantly 
recurring monotony, make the inspection of large Egyptian collec- 
tions as tiresome to the great bulk of visitors, as the review of a 
Russian regiment is to the civilian ; one figure resembles the other, 
and only the closer investigation of an experienced eye descries a 
difference of style and individuality. 

The bas-reliefs were not, for the Egyptians, so much independent 
works of art, as architectural ornaments, and means for conveying 
knowledge, answering often the purpose of a kind of vignettes or 
illustrations of hieroglyphical inscriptions. They record always some 
defined, historical, religious, or domestic scene, without pretension 
to any allegorical double-meaning, or esoteric symbolism. Beauty 
remained with their hierogrammatic artists less important than dis- 
tinctness, the correctness of drawing being sacrificed to convention- 
alisms of hieratic style ; but, on the other hand, a general truthful- 
ness of the representation was peculiarly aimed at. The unnatural 
mannerism of the Egyptian bas-relief manifests itself principally in 
the too high position of the ear, 54 and in representing the eye and 
chest as in front view, whilst the head and lower part of the body are 
drawn in profile. 65 Nevertheless, this constant mannerism and many 
occasional incorrectnesses are blended with the most minute appre- 
ciation of individual and national character. It is impossible not at 
once to recognize the portraits of the kings upon their different 
monuments ; and we alight on reliefs where some of the figures are 
so carelessly drawn as to present two right or two left hands to the 
spectator, yet combined with such characteristic effigies of negroes,, of 
Shemites, of Assyrians, of Nubians, &c, that they remain superior to 
the representations of human races by the Greeks and Romans. 
This general truthfulness applies to Egyptian art from the very first 
dawn of history, throughout all the subsequent periods, down to the 
time of the Roman conquest. But whilst the principal features of 
art remained stationary, the eye of the art-student finds many 
cbanges in details, and these constitute the history of Egyptian art. 

53 Cf. Wilkinson, Architecture of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1853. 

64 Mobton, Cran. JEgypt., Philad., 1844, pp. 26-7; and "inedited MSS." in Types of Man- 
kind, p. 318: — Pruner, Die UeberbkibselderAltayyptishchenMenschenrage,Mimchen,lS4:(i,ii.6. 

55 For a ludicrous example, see the " 37 Prisoners at Benihassan," in Rosellini, M. R. 
XXVI — VIII ; of the remote age of the Xllth dynasty. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



107 



The proportions of the statues in the time of the Old Empire [say 
from the 35th century b. c, down to the 20th, 56 ] are short and heavy; 
the figures look, therefore, somewhat awkward; hut, on the whole, 
they are conceived with considerable feeling of truth, and executed 
with the endeavour to obtain anatomical correctness. The principal 
forms of the body, and even its details, the skull, the muscles of the 
chest and of the knees, are nearly always correctly sculptured in close 
but not servile imitation of nature. The shape of the eye is not yet 
disfigured by a conventional frame, nor is the ear put too high ; but 
the fingers and toes evidently offered the greatest difficulties to the 
primeval Egyptian artists. They commonly failed to form them 
correctly ; the simplicity and exactitude displayed in sculpturing the 
face and body scarcely ever extended to the hands and feet, which 
are blunt and awkward. 

The earliest of all the statues now extant in the world, as far as 
we know, is the efhgy of Kam-ten, or Homten, a "royal kinsman" 
of the md dynasty, found in his tomb at Abooseer, and now in the 
Berlin Museum. The following wood-cut [7] is a faithful reduction of 
this statue's head, characterized by a 
good-natured expression, without any 
mannerism or conventional type about 
the features ; the eye is correctly, and 
the mouth naturally drawn ; not yet 
twisted into the stereotyped unmean- 
ing smile of the later periods. 

It is interesting to compare the 
head of this statue with the low-relief 
portrait [8] of the same prince from the 
same tomb, in order to perceive the 
difference between the artistic con- 
ception of a statue and of a relief 
in Egypt. The relief portrait is evi- Kam-ten, Statue 



Fig. 7. 




66 As previously stated, in the present impossibility of attaining, for times anterior to the 
XVIIth dynasty, any precise chronology, we shall make use herein of the vague term cen- 
turies, when treating on events anterior to the age of Solomon, taken at B. C. 1000. The 
numerical system of Chev. Lepsius furnishes the scale preferred by us, which is defined in 
Types of Mankind, p. 689. His arrangement of Egyptian dynasties may be consulted in 
Briefe aus JEgyplen, JEthioplen unci der Halbinsel des Sinai, Berlin, 1852, pp. 364-9; of 
which the elegant English translation by the Misses Horner (Bohn's Library, 1853) contains 
the later emendations of this learned Egyptologist. 

6 * Communicated in lithograph by Chev. Lepsius to Mr. Gliddon ; together with our sub- 
sequent Nos., 8, 9, 10, and other heads that space precludes us from inserting; but for the 
important use of all which, in these iconographic and ethnological studies, we beg to tender 
to the Chevalier our joint acknowledgments. 



108 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 




Kam-teu, Belief. 
Fig. 9. 



dently more conventional. It is not a free artistical imitation of 
Fig. 8. nature, the hand of the sculptor heing 

fettered by traditionary rules. This 
conventionalism of the reliefs not 
being applicable to statues, is an evi- 
dence that sculpture in Egypt began 
with the relief, which again grew out 
of the simple outline. The principal 
difference between the two portraits 
is, that the eye is not fore-shortened 
in the relief, whilst the lips are 
too long; still, the peculiar raising 
of the angles of the mouth is not 
conventional in the first period of 
Egyptian art. 

The red granite statue of prince 
Bet-mes, [9] in the British Museum, 
(No. 60, A,) an officer of State, 
"king's relation," of the same 
period, displays a similar artistical 
character; clumsy proportions, but 
a close observation of nature, 
without any tendency to embellish 
or to idealize. It is, what it was 
intended to be, a faithful portrait. 
The homely relief-head [10] of an- 
other "royal relative," Ey-meei, of 
the IVth dynasty, from the Berlin 
Museum, possesses such a striking 
individuality of character that, in 
spite of the conventional repre- 
sentation of the eye, we cannot 
doubt for a moment its resem- 
blance to this royal kinsman 
of king Cheops - Suphis, whose 
tomb is the great pyramid of 
Geezeh. 

We now have the pleasure of 
submitting to the reader, in a 
series of lithographic plates, por- 
traits as yet unique in the history 
Et-meei, Relief. of Art, which for antiquity, inte- 

rest, beauty, and rareness, surpass everything hitherto known. 




Bet-mes, Statue. 
Fig. 10. 




pin. 



m 





M.Solzmannpiioto6.'P.aris 



Ancient Scribe' (Ante,. PI I.') -Profile 





- JSJraK 



Same head, altered into a modern Fellah. 



Giidikn.resterarFlilai 



F SDTival &. Co. lila press PhiT 



GENERAL REMARKS N" ICONOGRAPHY. 109 

Particulars concerning the unrivalled and still-inedited discoveries, 
during the years 1851-54 at Memphis, of M. Auguste Mariette, 
now one of the Conservateurs of the Louvre Museum, are supplied 
by our collaborator Mr. Gliddon [Chapter V. infra]. With that 
frank liberality which is so honorable to scientific men, MM. de 
Rouge, Mariette, and Deveria, not merely permitted Mrs. Gliddon 
to copy whatever, in that gorgeous Museum, might become available 
to the present work ; but the last-named Egyptologist kindly pre- 
sented her husband with the photographic originals (taken by M. 
Deveria himself from these scarcely-unpacked statues, — May, 1855,) 
from which our copies have been transferred directly to the stone, 
without alteration in any perceptible respect. In these complaisant 
facilities, the very distinguished photographer of Jerusalem, M. Aug. 
Salzmann, also volunteered his skilful aid ; and we reproduce [see 
PI. LL] the facsimile profile of the " Scribe," due to his accurate 
instrument. Not to be outdone in generosity towards their trans- 
atlantic colleague, Chev. Lepsius, who had just been surveying these 
" nouveautes archeologiques" at the Louvre, subsequently forwarded 
from Berlin, to Mr. Gliddon in London, a complete series of archaic 
Egyptian portraits, drawn on stone also from photographs, which 
included likewise copies of those already obtained from M. Mari- 
ette's Memphite collection. Such are some of those unrequitable 
favors through which we are enabled to be the first in laying docu- 
ments so precious before fellow-students of ethnology. Their power- 
ful bearing upon the question of permanence of type in Egypt during 
5000 years, — upon that of the effects of amalgamation among dis- 
tinct types, in elucidation of the physiological law that the autoch- 
thonous majority invariably, in time, absorbs and effaces the foreign 
minority ; and as supplying long-deficient criteria whereby to analyze 
and compare the ethnic elements of less historical nations than the 
Egyptians, — these interesting points fall especially within the pro- 
vince of Dr. ZSTott ; and he has discussed them in his Prefatory Re- 
marks to this volume. 

With these brief indications, we proceed to test our theory of the 
principles that characterize the Art of different nationalities ; calling 
to mind, with regard to these most antique specimens of all statuary, 
that, until their arrival at Paris in the autumn of 1854, it had 
scarcely been suspected that the primordial Egyptians attained the 
art of making statues " ronde-bosse" much before the XLTth dynasty 
[about 2200 b. c.]. The authors of " Types of Mankind," in their 
wide investigation of monographic data, were unable to produce any 
Nilotic sculpture more ancient than bas-reliefs. 58 Exceptional doubts, 

58 Op. oil., pp. 241-3, PI. I.— IV. 



110 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

to this current opinion on the relative modernness of Egyptian 
statuary, were then entertained chiefly by Mr. Birch — who had 
already classified, as appertaining to the Old Empire, various archaic 
fragments in the British Museum, — by Chev. Lepsius, when publish- 
ing a few mutilated statues among the early dynasties of the Denk- 
maler, — and by the Vicomte de Rouge, who wrote in 1852 ; 59 " Trois 
statues de la galerie du Louvre (nos. 36, 37, 38) presentent un excel- 
lent specimen de la sculpture de ces premiers ages. Dans ces mor- 
ceaux, uniques jusqu'iei et par consequent inestimables, le type des 
hommes a quelque chose de plus trapu et de plus rude ; la pose est 
d'une grande simplicity; quelques parties rendent la nature avec 
verite ; mais Ton sent deja qu'une loi hieratique a regie les attitudes 
et va ravir aux artistes une partie precieuse de leur liberte." 

It must, therefore, be gratifying to the authors of the precursory 
volume to the present, to find their doctrine, "that the primitive 
Egyptians were nothing more nor less than — EGYPTIANS," 80 so 
incontestably confirmed by a group of statues which did not reach 
Paris for six months after the publication of their researches ; and 
we may now rejoice with those archaeologists, whose acumen had 
already foreshadowed the discovery of beautiful statuary belonging 
to the early days of the pyramids, that, henceforward, the series of 
Egyptian art continues, in an unbroken chain, from the 35th century 
B. C. down to long after the Christian era. 

Prince Sepa [Plate HI., fig. 1], and his wife ISTas, or ISTesa, [fig. 2], 
are the first we shall examine among these statues of the Louvre ; 
from Lepsius's copy. They are likewise somewhat clumsy as regards 
the general proportions ; but parts of the body, for instance the 
knees, are sculptured with an anatomical correctness superior to 
that of the monuments of the great Ramses. The statue of Shbmka 
[Plate IV.] "superintendent of the royal domains" (IVth or Vlth 
dynasty), seated between the small-sized standing figures of princess 
Ata, his wife, and their son Knem, is an excellent illustration of 
incipient elongation together with greater elegance of the artistical 
canon. In spite of the awkward composition, it attracts our atten- 
tion powerfully, since the face teems with life and individuality; 
whilst the forms are correct in the main, but lamentably stumpy 
and clumsy about the bauds and feet. [See Plate V, fig. 2.] 

The head of a Priest, Pher-nefer, or Pahoo-er-nefer [Plate V., 
fig. 1 ], " Superintendent of the timber-cutters and of agriculture," 
found together with Shemka in the same sepulchre, is uncommonly 

69 Notice dee Monuments exposes dans la galerie d'antiquitSs eigypliennes (Salle du rez-de-chaus- 
sSe), au MusSe du Louvre, Paris, 1852, pp. 7-8. 
«> Types of Mankind, p. 245. 



.-~ :- I 



PI. III. 







.,# 






Sepa. 



'■.■:'■ .'■■."■-;... 






I 



ill 



: 



■•■ 




; : -& 
^ 




II ■ ' ■ 
I 

4 I '+ v*" 




"\ 



! I iff ff ' ' ' 



,M. 



Nesa. 

'Louvre Museum. 





PL IV. 




. 




Knem. Skhem-ka. Ata 

(Luuvre Museum.) 



GENERAL REMARKS OK ICONOGRAPHY. Ill 

well moulded; but the crouching statuette of a "Scribe," — cele- 
brated at the Louvre as "le petit bonhomme" — is the crowning 
masterpiece of primitive art revealed through Mariette's exhuma- 
tions. It is from this venerable tomb of the Vth dynasty, 5000 
years old, which the later constructors, (above 2000 years ago,) of the 
ancient Avenue of Sphinxes leading to the Memphite Serapeum had 
cut through and walled-up again. The material is white limestone, 
colored red ; which even to its trifling abrasions is reproduced as a 
most appropriate frontispiece to this work [Plate I.]. The profile 
view [Plate II., fig. 1] exhibits the excellence of its workmanship, 
no less than the purest type of an ancient Egyptian. Beneath it 
[fig. 2], Mr. Gliddon has repeated the same head, with the sole 
addition of the moustache and short beard, and the mutation of the 
head-dress into the quilted-cotton skull-cap of the modern peasantry ; 
and thus we behold the perfect preservation of a typical form of man 
through 5000 years of time, in the familiar effigy of a living Fellah ! 

"We are not reduced to mere conjectures," comments the Conservator of the Imperial 
Louvre Museum, "concerning the figure of the crouching Scribe, placed in the middle of 
the hall (Salle civile.) 61 It was found in the tomb of Skhem-ka with the figures collected 
together in the hall of the most ancient monuments (Salle des Monuments.) It appertains, 
therefore, to the Vth or the Vlth dynasty. The figure, so to say, is speaking : this look 
which amazes was obtained by a very ingenious combination. In a piece of opaque white 
quartz is encrusted a pupil of very transparent rock-crystal, in the centre of which is 
planted a little metallic ball. The whole eye is fixed in a bronze leaf which answers for 
both eyelids. The sand had very happily preserved the color of all the figures in this tomb. 
The movement of the knees and the slope of the loins are above all remarkable for their 
correctness . all the traits of the face are strongly stamped with individuality ; it is evident 
that this statuette was a portrait." 

These, with the beautiful head of another Egyptian, long m the 
Louvre, but unclassed until 1854, [Plate VI.] ^ of perhaps the same 
period, exceed in artistic interest all the monuments of the Nile-val- 
ley ; and the speaking expression of their countenances invariably 
catches the eye of every visitor of the Egyptian Gallery at Paris. 
Not that they approach ideal sculptured beauty, such as we are 
accustomed to meet with in Greek statuary ; on the contrary, there 
is not a spark of ideality in either of the two representations ; their 

61 De Rouge, Notice Sommaire des Monumens egypliens exposes dans les galeries du Mush du 
Louvre, Paris, 18mo., 1855, p. 66. One further observation, instead of being any way em- 
bellished in our Plate I., our copy, obtained through the heliotype, is defective in the legs; 
which, projecting in advance of the upper part of the body, are heavier and less propor- 
tionate than in the stone original ; but possessing no measurements for their reduction, we 
have not felt at liberty to deviate from M. Deveria's photograph. 

62 The following is M. Deveria's note on this gem of antique art: — "Buste provenant 
d'une statue de l'ancien art memphite, contemporaine des pyramides. Pierre calcaire, pein- 
ture rouge, grandeur naturelle." Paris, Louvre Museum, 30th May, 1855. 



112 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

type is neither grand nor handsome ; but they are truthful and most 
lively portraits of Egyptians, stamped with such a striking individu- 
ality, as to leave the impression that they must have resembled their 
originals, notwithstanding that the imitation of nature is with them 
not at all painfully scrupulous, and rather evinces considerable 
artistical tact in the execution. The correctness of the position of 
the ear in these early Egyptian monuments is peculiarly interesting, 
since it confirms the observation of Dr. Morton, before alluded to, 
that its misplacement on the later and more ordinary monuments is 
not founded upon strict imitation of nature, but that it belongs alto- 
gether to conventional hieratic mannerism. 

The relief portrait of king Men-ka-her, of the Vth dynasty [Plate 
~VTL) — [say, about 30 centuries b. c] certainly deserves a place of 
honor as the earliest royal etEgy in existence, not mutilated in its 
features. 63 It was found, 1851-4, by M. Mariette, on the lower side 
of a square calcareous stone employed by later hands in a construe 
tion of the XlXth Dynasty [14th century B. c] in the Serapeium of 
Memphis. The stone belonged originally to a different monument, 
probably destroyed by the Hyksos, the ruins of which were thus 
adopted for building materials by a posterior and irreverent age, — 
just as Mehemet Ali and his family have destroyed Pharaonic and 
Ptolemaic temples for the construction of barracks and factories, out 
of stones Id scribed with the signs of a much higher civilization than 
that of Egypt's present rulers. 64 It is remarkable that the ear of 
Men-ka-her is placed too high on tbis relief, whereas on the relief of 
the "royal daughter" Heta (IVth Dynasty), lithographed by Lep- 
sius for the Denkmaler, it is entirely correct. 

The greatest pains have been taken to present a correct facsimile 
of this ante-Abrahamic Pharaoh's beautiful face. The original was 
stamped, drawn, and colored at the Louvre, by Mrs. Gliddon ; and 
the shade of paper on which it is lithographed, is intended to resemble- 
that of the stone, which has been divested of its pristine colors. 

Under the X 1 1 tb Dynasty [b. c. 22 centuries] the expression of 
statues becomes peculiarly refined, and the short and clumsy propor- 
tions are more elongated. "It seems," says De Eouge, 65 "that in 
the course of centuries the race has become thinner and taller, under 
the influence of climate," — or perhaps by the infusion of foreign 

63 Those of Shupho and others at Wadee Magara are rather effigies than likenesses, and 
are too abraded to be relied on. 

64 Gliddon, Appeal to the antiquaries of Europe on the destruction of the monuments of Egypt, 
London, 1841: — Prisse d'Avennes, Collections d'Antiquites egyptiennes au Kaire, ReTue Ar- 
ch^ologiqne, 16 Mars, 1846. 

65 Notice Som., p. 24: — Id., Rapport sur les Coll. egyptiennes en Europe, 1851, p 14. 



■ 






•?> 



Pahou-er-nowre. 






5 
1 



Pl.V. 



Skhem-ka. [ Profile.) 

i Li/iwre Museum.) 




PI. VI. 



.-*■-■ J 



m 



" ^- fa..'.. ^. 






(Louvre Museum. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 113 

Shemitic blood, suggests the ethnologist. I do not dare to decide 
this question, but I simply state the fact, that not only in Egypt but 
likewise in Greece, and later again at Constantinople, the archaic 
representations were positively shorter ; and that each successive 
canon of art extended the legs as well as all the lower parts of the 
body in relation to the upper ones. Thus the Selinuntian reliefs are 
shorter than the statues of ^Egina ; which again are shorter than the 
canon of Polycletes ; whilst the canon of Lysippus is still longer. 66 
The barbarous figures upon the triumphal arch of Constantine are so 
short that they resemble dwarfs ; at the same time that the human 
body under Justinian and his successors becomes, on the reliefs, by 
full one-eighth too long. 

Contemporaneously with the more elegant proportions of the sta- 
tues of the "XTTth Dynasty, the column makes its appearance in 
Egyptian architecture. In the hypogea of Beni-Hassan we behold 
even the prototype of the fluted Doric column. 67 The bas-reliefs of 
this Dynasty are more beautifully and delicately carved than they 
ever were at other dates in Egypt ; the movement of the figures is so 
truthful, and, in spite of the conventional formation of the eye, chest, 
and ear, so artistically conceived, that we are led to expect much 
more from the progressive development of Egyptian art than it really 
accomplished. The glorious dawn was not followed by the bright 
day it promised. Art culminated under Sesortasen I. [22 cent. b. a], 
the splendid leg of whose granite statue is at Berlin. It was delicate 
and refined, but the feeling of ideal beauty remained unknown to the 
Egyptian race, and the freedom of movement in the reliefs was never 
transferred to the statues, nor did the relief become emancipated 
from the thraldom of hieratic conventionalism in the details of the 
human body. The development of art ever continued to be imperfect 
and unfinished in the valley of the Nile. 

There are but very few statues of this period (XTTth Dynasty) 
extant in the collections of Europe ; monuments closely preceding 
the invasion of the Hyksos, and therefore more exposed to their 
ravages, belong to the rarest specimens of Egyptian art. The 
(inedited) head of prince Amenemha, [11] governor of the west of 
Egypt, in the time of the XTT th Dynasty, copied from his dark-basalt 
statue in the British Museum, and the portrait of king Nefer-Hetep 
I., of the XLTIth Dynasty [Plate VLTJ, fig. 2, from the Denkmaler~], 
may give those interested in these minute comparisons an idea of the 
beauty and delicacy of that period, whilst with Amenemha even the 

66 See principally K. 0. Mijller, Handbuch der Archceologie, <S 92-4, 96, 99, and 322 ; and 
Pliny, Histor. Nat., xxxiv. 19, 206. 

61 Lepsius, Colonncs-piliers en Egypte, Annal. de l'lnst. Arche'ol., Rome, 1838. 

8 



114 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



Fig. 11. 




Amenemha — Statue. 



toes are artistically represented. King Eefer-Hetep's ear, however, 

is placed too high, the earliest instance 
of such an abnormity in an Egyptian 
statue. 

The invasion of the nomad Hyksos, 
between the XTTTth and XVXTth Dynas- 
ties, whether Arab and Phoenician She- 
mites, as commonly believed, or perhaps 
Turanians (Scythians, Turkomans), as 
we might guess from the fact that they 
were a people of horsemen, 68 interrupted 
the development of Egyptian art and 
civilization for several centuries. Their 
reign is marked by destruction and ruins, 
not by works of art or of public utility ; still their irruption benefited 
the valley of the Mle through their introduction of the most impor- 
tant of all auxiliary domesticated animals, the horse, unknown to 
primeval Arabia, and to Egypt previously to the Hyksos, but appear- 
ing on the reliefs of the Dynasty which overcame the invaders. 

The XVTIth Dynasty of Aahmes 69 and his successors snapped the 
foreign yoke asunder, and expelled the nomades. Art revived again. 
The restoration in public life was as thorough-going as that of Erance 
under the Bourbons ; the reign of the foreign intruders was altogether 
ignored, and scarcely mentioned in the records but for its overthrow. 
In their canons ro of art, this New Empire tried to imitate the style 
of the XLTth and XTTT th Dynasty; but the spirit which manifests 
itself on the monuments of the XVDZth Dynasty is different from 
that of the earlier periods. Instead of the refined elegance which 
reigned under the Sesortasens, we encounter more grandeur in the 
New Empire, — somewhat incorrect and conventional, and less atten- 
tive to nature than in the earlier monuments, but always impressive. 
During the victorious period between Thutmosis I. and Bexen-Aten, 

68 Pickering, The Races of Men, vol. ix. of the XT. S. Explor. Ezped., 1848. •' On the 
introduced plants and animals of Egypt:" — Gliddon, Otia JEgypliaca, London, 1849, p. 50. 

69 The Hyksos are beginning, at last, to emerge from historical darkness. "La lecture 
du papyrus No. 1 de la collection Sallier a reVele" dernierement a M. de Rouge' une des men- 
tions longtemps cherch^es. Le papyrus s'est trouve" etre un fragment d'une histoire de la 
guerre entreprise par le roi de la The'baide contre le roi pasteur Apapi. Cette guerre se ter- 
mina sous Amosis (Aahmes), le monarque suivant, par l'expulsion des strangers." 
(Alfred Maury, Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1855, p. 1063). 

70 1 use the term "canon," in the sense adopted by Lepsius (Auswahl, Leipzig, fol. 1840 
— Plate " Canon der iEgyptisehen Proportionen "), and since so well classified into three 
epochas of artistic variation in the DenJcmaler; — by Birch (Gallery of Antiquities selected 
from the British Museum, Part II., PI. 33, p. 81 ;) — and by Bonomi, on the canon of Vitru- 
vius Pollio (The Proportions of the Human Figure, London, 8vo., 1856). 



<e sf 



. 









PI. VII. 



;■ 






\ 



Men- ka-her. _ V* Dynasty. 



( Louvre Museum.' 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



115 



recently identified as Manetho's Achencheres, it nearly rose to beauty, 
attaining its culmination under the reign of Amenophis the ELI. 
Though the eye is enclosed in a peculiar conventional frame, while 
the lips invariably smile, the muscles of the chest, belly, and arms, 
are less distinctly marked, and the knees are incorrect; yet, notwith- 
standing these defects, the individuality of the monarchs and princes 
whose statues adorn our Museums is most expressively rendered, par- 
ticularly among some of the collection at Turin. Colossuses begin 
to be sculptured; and the idea of grandeur which pervades these 
monuments seeks an expression in external size. 

The following portraits in wood-cut, reduced from Lepsius's beau- 
tiful lithographs, sufficiently illustrate the style of the XVIIth Dyn. 



Fig. 12. 



Fig. 13. 





Thotmes I. 



Thotmes III. 



which, in the Chevalier's chronology, comprises the epoch of Abra- 
ham. I regret, however,, that the engraver, unskilled in Egyptian 




116 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

style, lias failed to reproduce the harmonious delicacy of the originals. 
They can be consulted in the Denkmaler. 71 

Besides these four royal heads none is more interesting for the 

ethnologist than a fifth (P late VUI, fig. 
Flg- 16 ' 1], not only for the beautiful carving 

of the expressive features of the 
Queen-mother of that Dynasty, but 
peculiarly because it proves with how 
little foundation Nofre-Ari has been 
taken for a negro princess ! She was 
always recorded with great veneration 
by her descendants, and often por- 
trayed by them in company with 
king Aahmes, the founder of the 
Dynasty and liberator of Egypt, and 
in many of those reliefs her face is 
colored black, 7 ' 2 owing to some reason 
Akhen-aten. unknown to us ; her features, however, 

as well in reliefs as in statues, belong 
to that " Caucasian" class termed Shemitic. In the reign of the 
heretic Bexen-Aten, Akhenaten, the monotheistic worshipper of 
the sun's disk — whom some imagine to be Joseph's Pharaoh. — art 
is still more individual and characteristic, — so much so, as to border 
on caricature and ugliness ; for instance, in the portrait of the king 
himself; 73 [16] of whom a most beautiful statuette adorns the Salle 
historique du Louvre. 

71 Also, from Rosellini's copies, in Types of Mankind, pp. 145-51. 

72 Thus for instance in Osburn, Monumental history of Egypt, II., Frontispiece — reduced 
from IiEPSius, Denkmaler aus JEgypien, Abth. III., Bl. 1. 

[Compare her likeness in Types of Mankind, p. 134, fig. 33; and p. 145, fig. 45; with 
note 123, p. 718. Nestor L'Hote has somewhere conjectured, that, when this sacred 
queen is painted black, she appears after death in the character of " Isis funfebre" — figura- 
tive of her nether world espousal bythe black Osiris, lord of Hades; and this idea, of a 
" black Isis," was perpetuated, until last century, through our European middle-ages, in the 
many basaltic statues of that goddess, represented suckling the new-born Horus, imported 
from Egypt at great cost, which superstition consecrated in many Continental churches as 
images of the black Virgin and her Son. Cf. Maury's Lcgendes picuses du Moyen-Age, 
Paris, 1843, p. 38, note 2; and Millin.— G. R. G] 

73 types of Mankind, p. 147, fig. 55; pp. 170-2; and notes Nos. 151, 193-7. 

[More recent researches, here again, are removing some of the unaccountable embarrass- 
ments which the strange personage, in his name, epoch, and physiological peculiarities, has 
occasioned, for 25 years (L'Hote, Lellres ecrites d'figypte en 1838 el 1839, Paris, 1840; pp. 
53-78), among Egyptologists. It now seems certain, 1st, (Brugsch, Reiseberiehle, p. 188: 
— Maury, Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept., 1855, p. 1068: — Mariette, Bulletin Archeologigue 
de V Athenceum Francois, June, 1855, pp. 56—57), that, instead of Bexen-alen, his name 
should be read Akhenaten ; through which melioration he becomes assimilated to the two 
.Ax/mxtyii of Manetho's lists; — and 2d, possible, that his "anomalous features," as Nott 



PI. VIII. 




Aahmes-nofh-ari. 



■Si 







i'/ 



>* 



*"■ 



;"' 









Nefer-hetep I. 

( Berlin Museum .) 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 117 

Under the long reign of the great conqueror Ramesses LT., the 
Sesostris of the Greeks, as well as under his successor Menephtah, 
II. (possibly, as Lepsius considers, the Pharaoh of the Exodus), there 
is a considerable falling off from the accomplished forms of the pre- 
ceding periods. Egyptian artists now indulge merely in external 
grandeur, whilst expression and individuality are neglected. The 
taste for colossal statuary of enormous size, which always announces 
' an inroad of barbarism into art, prevails in the time of the great 
Conqueror. The artist no longer aims to create satisfaction, but 
only to excite wonder in the heart of a spectator. The overcoming 
of mechanical difficulties becomes his highest goal ; — a certain sign 
that engineer's work is more appreciated by the people than artistic 
merit. It is remarkable that the deterioration of style, which thence- 
forward continues for many centuries, appears just under the reign 
of Ramesses II., who brought Egypt into close contact with Asiatic 
nations through matrimonial alliances 74 and by conquest: in confirm- 
ation of which Asiatic infiltration, we perceive that, about his 
time, several words, avowedly Shemitic, were introduced into the 
body of the Egyptian language, 75 and Asiatic divinities were im- 
ported into the Egyptian pantheon; thus for instance Atesh, or 
Analha, the goddess of love, adored on the banks of the Euphrates, 
had temples dedicated to her at Thebes ; 76 Baal entered into Ni- 
lotic theognosy; Astarte soon after had a Phoenician temple at 
Memphis ; the goddess Kioun-t, with her companion Renpo, appears 
on steles. 77 But this intercourse with foreign nations, and phara- 
onic domination over a portion of Asia, exercised no good influence 

and I designated them, in Types, proceed from emasculation; otherwise, that, at some period 
of his adult age, he became (not voluntarily like Origen, who was imbued with Matthew 
xix. 12) an Eunuch; which probable circumstance would also explain the condign ven- 
geance wreaked by him on the god Amun and its votaries, to whom he doubtless owed his 
treble voice. My own experiences during 28 years in the Levant entirely corroborate the 
view taken [loc. cit.) by Marietter — 

" Nous avons, de notre temps m6me, quelques exemples de ces alliances. Dans ce cas, 
les infortunes que la civilisation musulmane admet dans son sein a. de si riSvoltantes condi- 
tions, £pousent des veuves, leurs compatriotes ou leurs allie'es, aux enfants desquelles ils 
transmettent les b<ine'nces des charges eleve'es que, malgre' leur mutilation, il leur est permis 
de remplir. II est probable que si Akhenaten gprouva re'ellement le malheur dont ses traits 
Eemblent re'veMer l'eVidence, ce fut pendant les guerres d'Ame'nophis III au milieu des 
peuplades du Sud.' L'usage de mutiler les prisonniers et les blesses est, parmi ces peu- 
plades, aussi ancien que le monde." — G. R. G.] 

74 He married the daughter of his greatest enemy, the king of the Khetas, (Hittites ?), 
Shemitic Asiatics. 

75 Bikch, Crystal Palace Catalogue, p. 251. 

76 De Rodge, Notice sommaire, p. 16. 

77 Lanci, Letlre & M. Prisse a" Avenues, Paris, 1847, pp. 17—20, PI. II.: — and Prisse, 
Continuation des Monuments de Champollion, 1848, fol. 



118 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



Fig. 17. 




on Egyptian art. It is at this period that the misplacement of the 

ear becomes habitual with statues. The 
elegant youthful Ramesses of the Tu- 
rin Museum, and the excellent colossus 
from the so-called Memnonium at Thebes, 
(Belzoni's), now in the British Mu- 
seum, are nevertheless well sculptured; 
reminding us of the better school of de- 
sign ; but the colossus at Metrahenny 
(Memphis), 78 and principally the gigantic 
statues of Ibsambul, 79 [17] begin to be 
heavy and incorrect, remarkable only for 
their monstrous size. The gradual decline 
is marked by the position of the ear: right 
on the earlier statues, it is too high at Me- 
trahenny, and resembles horns at Ibsambul. 
External grandeur, however, cannot make up for the decline of 
artistic feeling and want of careful finish. If we examine the monu- 
ment of Ramesses, we get involuntarily the impression that the artists 
of this period were always hurried on by royal command, without 
ever having sufficient time fully to complete their task. A sketchy 
roughness is always visible in the later works of Ramesses, blended 
with a conventional mannerism. Art has degenerated into manu- 
facture. 

The reliefs of Ramesses Eld (XXth dynasty), and the following 
Ramessides, together with the monuments of Sheshonk, and his 
(XXIId) dynasty, are still less significant. They look dry and dull in 
spite of a more minute and laborious, but spiritless and petty execu- 
tion. During the Shemitic (or Assyrian) XXIId, 8 ' and succeeding 
foreign dynasties, down to that called ^Ethiopian in Manetho's and 
other lists, [about b. c. 972 to 695] but evidently not negro, inasmuch 
as the reliefs of Tirhaka are "Caucasian" and somewhat Shemitic, 81 
the infusion of foreign blood and contact with foreign art were still 
more detrimental to the Egyptian style. Babylonian representations 



Ramesses II. 



18 Bonomi, Transactions of R. Soc, of Literature, London, 1845 : — Lepsius, Denkmaler, 
Abth. III., bl., 142, e. b. 

' 9 Cf. Lepsius, Op. cit., Abth. III., bl. 190. The best popular design of these four pro- 
digious statues is in Bartlett's Nile Boat, 1849 ; the one most resembling Napoleon I. is 
that of Roselmni, M. R., pi. VI., fig. 22 ; reduced in the above wood-cut. Compare 
that in Champollion's folio Monuments de VEgypte de la Nubie. 

80 Birch, Trans. R. Soc. Lit., III. part I. 1848, pp. 184-70; Latard, Nineveh and its Re- 
mains, 1848; Discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853; for ample corrobora- 
tions: — confirmed by Mariette, Op. cit., pp. 89-96. 

81 Types of Mankind, figs. 69, 70, 71. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 119 

became fashionable on articles of toilet or furniture, — for instance on 
combs and spoons, — but indigenous art remained lifeless; tbe Baby- 
lonian innovations barren and without lasting results. It is worthy 
of notice, that about the time of the Bubastite (probably Babylonian) 
XXIId dynasty, a revolution occurred likewise in hieroglyphical 
writing, a great number of ideographs having assigned to them a 
phonetic value. 82 Mariette's fresh discovery of the never-before iden- 
tified cartouche of Bocchoris, is also noteworthy in connection with 
this period of Egyptian annals. 83 

"With the Saitie kings, (XXYIth dynasty, began 675 b. a), a 
national reaction sets in, again accompanied by a new development 
of sculpture, under Psametik I. and his successors. During this 
period of "renaissance," every effort was made to restore the insti- 
tutions and ideas of the long-buried IVth dynasty of Cheops. The 
forms remain the old ones, but the details become more charming 
though less grand than in the monuments of the XVTIth dynasty. 
The artists rectify the position of the ear, although extending it too 
much in the upper part; they abandon the conventional frame of the 
eye; they study nature in preference to the traditional canon; the 
forms of the human body become less rigid, the muscles are better 
rounded and more correctly drawn, and a naturalistic tendency 
supersedes the conventionalism of the preceding epoch of decay. 
Colossal statues are still sculptured, but not of such monstrous pro- 
portions as under Ramesses ; at the same time that the number of 
small, charming, sculptures, full of vigour and (Egyptian) grace, 
increases considerably. They are easily recognized by their finish 
and sharp precision of workmanship ; the aim of the artist being 
neatness and elegance; as distant from the somewhat conventional 
grandeur of the XVTIth and XV 111th, as from the refined delicacy 
of the XTTth, or the honest truthfulness of the ffid and IVth dynas- 
ties. The following inedited head, now in the Louvre, is a most 
excellent specimen of the style of the Sa'ites. It is of a greenish 
basalt, and was found broken off from the rest of a full-length figure, 
by M. Mariette, amid some ruins of the Serapeum at Memphis, in 
the midst of fragments belonging to the XXVIth dynasty. He gave 
a plaster-cast of it (now in my cabinet) to Mr. Gliddon, from which 
the annexed wood-cut [18] has been drawn. No doubt as to its being 
& portrait; becaiise the Egyptian sculptor aimed always to reproduce 
individuality without idealizing, and possessed both eye and hand to 

82 Birch, Crysl. Pal. Catalogue, p. 243. 

83 It is to be hoped that the munificence of France in fostering archaeological discoveries 
will, ere long, place us in full possession of these new data. 



120 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 



copy nature with fidelity. 



Fig. 18. 




It corresponds in style to the superb torso 
of Psametik II. found at Sais, 
and long in the public library 



at Cambridge. 81 



Saitio Head. 



This second revival of Egypt 
was not confined to sculpture. 
"We see once more, as in the 
time of Eamesses and Osorchon, 
(XVIHth and XXIId dynasties, 
i. e. in the loth and 10th cen- 
turies b. c.) a most striking 
parallel between the intellectual 
and artistic life of the nation. 
The new naturalistic phase of 
Egyptian art coincides with an 
analogous, most important step 
in civilization, viz : the introduction of the Demotic alphabet, which 
for its phonetical character 85 or comparatively greater simplicity than 
either the hieratic or the hieroglyphical writing, must have favoured 
the diffusion of knowledge, by promoting epistolary intercourse 
amongst the Egyptians. It will, therefore, scarcely surprise anybody 
to learn that more than two thirds of the papyri in the Museums and 
collections of Europe, appertain to the period of Psameticus and his 
successors, although abundant papyric documents are extant of a 
far earlier epoch. 86 

Egyptian art lost its Saitic freshness, owing to the Persian conquest 
(b. c. 525), but the naturalistic style continued down to the reign of 
the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies. Under them Egyptian civili- 
zation came for the first time into immediate relation and uninter- 
rupted daily contact with a foreign high-culture, although the radical 
difference between the Egyptian and Greek race prevented amalga- 
mation on a larger scale. The Egyptian was too proud of hia 
millennial civilization to condescend to learn anything from the 
Greek, whom he called a child in versatility, as well as in the his- 

M Yobke and Leake, Egyptian Monuments of the British Museum, London, 1827 ; p. 17, 
PI. XIII. 

85 Burgsch, Grammutiea Demotica, 1855 ; together 'with this Savant's various publica- 
tions, cited by Birch, Cryst. Pal. Catalogue, p. 209 : — also Types of Mankind, Table of the 
"Theory of the order of development in human writings," pp. 630—1. 

86 They are innumerable. Among the oldest and most beautiful is Prisse's folio Hieratio 
Papyrus lilgyptien, Paris, 1849, — "sans hesitation le plus ancien manuscrit connu dans le 
monde entier ;" containing, with others, the royal oval of SeNeWROU (or Senofre), a king 
of old Hid dynasty (De Rouge, Inscription du Tombeau d'Aahmes, chef des Nautoniers, le. 
partie, Paris, 1851, p. 76). 



GENERAL REMARKS ON' ICOHOGRAPHY. 121 

torical age of his nation. " Solon, Solon ! you Greeks are always 
children," says Plato's priest of Sais, in the celebrated bold 
romance on the Atlantic Isles. Still, the Hellenic spirit could not 
remain wholly without influence. Alexandria assumed a cosmopoli- 
tan character, in which Greek elements predominated ; and the 
Ptolemies, surrounded by Greek poets, artists, and philosophers, 
enjoyed the resplendent evening of Greek culture on the foreign soil 
of the Miotic Delta. Indeed, it has been accurately observed that 
"Alexandria was very Greek, a little Jewish, and scarcely Egyptian 
at all." 87 With artistic display, unparalleled in the history of man- 
kind, they celebrated the festivals of the Olympian gods, whilst with 
princely expenditure they secured all the treasures of Greek litera- 
ture, as if they entertained a presentiment of the approaching doom 
of Hellenism. But whenever they went up the Mle, visiting Mem- 
phis, Thebes, and upper Egypt, they became again Pharaohs — "ever 
living, lords of diadems, watchers of Egypt, chastisers of the foreigners, 
golden hawks, greatest of the powerful kings of the upper and lower 
country, defenders of truth, beloved of truth, approved of the sun, 
beloved of Phtah." Their costume and titles, their sacrifices and 
oblations, the style of their decrees and dedications, are substantially 
the same as on the monuments of the ancient Pharaohs. But though 
it seems as if the national character and public life of Egypt itself 
had not undergone any material change, the Ptolemaic works of art 
reveal the slow action of Hellenism. Mariette's unexpected discovery, 
in 1850, of a hemicych formed of the Greek statues of Pindar, Lycur- 
gus, Solon, Euripides, Pythagoras, Plato, ^Eschylus, Homer, Aristotle, 
&c, in excavating the Memphite Serapeum, is a wonderful proof 
of the manner in which Hellenic ideas travelled with the Greeks up ' 
the Mle. Still, the elaborate attempts to attain Greek elegance and 
refinement, within the old traditional forms, resulted only in degra- 
dation ; producing a hybrid style, inferior to any of the former phases 
of Egyptian art. The last known monuments creditable to native 
statuaries, are thus referred to by the late Letronne 88 ; — "the 
second is a bust in rose-granite, of Mctanebo, preserved in the 
British Museum (Birch, Arundale and Bonomi, Gallery of Antiquities, 
PI. 45, fig. 166), of very beautiful workmanship ; the third is that 

87 Ampere, Voyage et Recherches en JSgypte el en Nubie; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1846, 
2d article. 

88 La civilisation tgyptienne depuis V elablissement des Grecs sous Psammeticus jusqu' a la 
conqulte d' Alexandre. (Extrait de la Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Fev. et 1 Avril, 1845, 
p. 50.) This refined specimen of art — which singularly corresponds in execution to the 
Sailic head above figured (No. 18) — -may be seen on a large scale in the Description de 
VEgypte (Antiq. V. PI. 69, figs. 7, 8) ; and on a smaller in Lenormant's Mus'ee des Anli- 
quites egypliennes, Paris, fol., 1840. 



122 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 

mutilated but admirable statue, in green basalt, found at Sebennytus, 
(Millin, Monuments inedits, I. p. 383), and wbicb decorates tbe ' salle 
du zodiaque ' of tbe Bibliotheque royale [nationale, publique, or inrpe- 
riale, — as tbe case may be]. Tbis torso, for tbe purity and fineness 
of Egyptian style, yields in notbing to tbe most noble remains of 
Egyptian sculpture : and I cannot forget tbat one of tbe skilful! est 
archeologues of our day, not being able to cast doubt upon tbe name 
of Nectanebo, wbicb tbis statue bears, sustained tbat this name bad 
been added, 'apres-coup,' to a statue of tbe time of Sesostris or of 
Menepbtba; a gratuitous supposition, rendered altogether useless 
through the observations contained in this memoir." 

The only passable relics, of tbe times of the Lagidse, now extant, 
are the rose-granite statues of Philadelphia and Arsinoe at the 
Vatican ; and they are poor enough. 

Indigenous art degenerated, however, still more under the Roman 
dominion, 80 languishing under the Julian and Elavian emperors, 
and becoming quite rude and barbarous soon after Hadrian : — the 
last hieroglyphic royal ovals, found in Egypt, belong to the Emperor 
Decius. 90 Indigenous Egyptian civilization and art, both connected 
with and founded upon hieroglyphics, expire about the same time. 

Such is the brief history of Egyptian art ; peculiarly remarkable 
for the constancy of its general character during a period of more 
than thirty-five centuries, no less than for its isolated and exclusively 
national development. The influence of foreign art and culture 
upon Egypt was always slight and prejudicial; whilst, with the ex- 
ception of Meroe on the upper Mle — an Egyptian colony maintain- 
ing itself only so long as its original Egyptian blood remained 
pure, 91 — no foreign kingdom or people ever accepted the civilization, 
the hieroglyphics and the art of Egypt, notwithstanding that the 
Empire on the Mle was superior in culture to all those neighboring 
nations with whom the Pharaohs came into contact. Phoenicia, 
Assyria, Persia, and perhaps even Greece and Etruria, borrowed 
some forms of' their art from Egypt; but these loans are, on the 
whole, trifling, and insufficient to stamp the art of those nations with 
an Egyptian character. In Assyria, as in Greece and Etruria, art 
developed itself nationally, and in each region may always be con- 
sidered as indigenous. 

89 Gad's folio Antiquilh de la Nubie, Denon, and the Great French work, contain abundant 
examples of this decline. 

90 Lepsius, Vorlaufige Nachricht Uier die Expedition, Berlin, 1849, p. 29. 

91 For proofs, — Abeken, Rapport, in Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic, Paris, Sept., 
1845, pp. 171-2, 174, 179:— Lepsius, Briefe, 1852, pp. 140-9, 204, 217-9, 239, &c. : while 
ocular evidence of this Ethiopian degradation of art may be obtained in the Denkmiiler, 
Abth. VI. bl. 2, 4, 9, 10. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 123 

"We have selected, for illustrating our sketch of Egyptian art, 
statues in preference to reliefs, which are always somewhat repug- 
nant to the taste of the public, on account of the peculiar conven- 
tional formation of the eye, drawn in front-view on profile heads. 
Besides, Types of Mankind already contains copious specimens of 
Egyptian royal relief-likenesses, from Aahmes, the restorer of Egypt, 
down to Menephtah, the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, including 
also the Sheshonks (SMshak), Shabaks and Tirhakas, so familiar to 
the readers of the Bible. The authority of those portraits (taken 
principally from Rosellini) is sufficiently established by the inscrip- 
tions which accompany them on the original sculptures ; their faithful- 
ness may easily be tested in any of the large collections of Europe, and 
principally in Egypt, among the monuments ; for it is a remarkable 
fact, that wherever a relief was sunk into the rock, recording the 
deeds of some individual Pharaoh, whether on the pylones of the 
temples, along the walls of tombs, and amid palatial decorations, or 
chiselled upon some tablet on the remotest borders of the Empire, 
his features, painted or sculptured, are always the same, and may be 
recognized everywhere throughout Egypt. It has, therefore, often 
been asked, by what means Egyptian artists could attain such a uni- 
formity at a time when no coins were as yet struck, and the art of 
engraving likenesses (not seals, &c.,) was unknown. It was very 
plausibly suggested, that an official pattern of the royal physiognomy, 
carved in wood, may easily have been circulated all over the valley 
of the Mle. The Roman emperors probably neglected the continu- 
ance of such customs, perhaps under belief that their coins might 
convey a sufficient idea of their features. The Egyptians, however, 
remain unacquainted with the portraits of their Roman rulers, whose 
effigies on Egyptian and lower-Nubian monuments are altogether 
conventional, without any attempt at portraying individuality and 
resemblance to the Roman Autocrats ; whose very name, as we see at 
Kalabshe and at Dendera, was often unknown to natives of the Nile. 92 
As a collateral confirmation of the suggestion about the circulation 
of regal portrait-patterns, we refer to some analogous preceedings 
under Queen Elizabeth, which we translate from the French of the 
Abbes De la Chau and Le Blond, 93 not being able to lay our hands 
upon the original document mentioned by them. 

" The excessive sensitiveness of Queen Elizabeth about beauty," say the learned French 
archaeologists, " gave birth to a most peculiar order in council, signed by the secretary 

92 Letronne, "Sur 1'absence du Mot Autocrator" — Mtmoires el Documents, Paris, 1849, 
pp. 1-8: — Champollion-Figeao, Fourier el NapoUon, l'£gyple el les cent jours, Paris, 1844, 
pp. 63-5. 

63 Pierres gravies du Cabinet Orleans, II. p. 1 94. 



124 THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 

Cecil, and promulgated in 1563. All the painters and engravers were prohibited by it to 
continue making portraits of the Queen, until some good artist should have made a truthful 
likeness, to serve as model for all the copies to be made in future, after the model has, upon 
examination, been found to be as good and exact as it could be. It is further said that the 
natural desire of all the subjects of the Queen, of every rank and condition, to possess the 
portrait of H. M., having induced many painters, engravers, and other artists, to multiply 
copies, it has been found that not one of them has succeeded in rendering all the beauty and 
charms of S. M. with exactness, much to the daily regret and complaints of her well-be- 
loved subjects. Order was, therefore, given for the appointment of commissioners (the 
French text says ' experts ') to inquire into the fidelity of the copies, and not to tolerate 
any iDne, marked by deformity or defects, from which, by the grace of God, Her Majesty 
was free." 

Iii conclusion, let us rejoice with our collaborator, M. Maury, that 
" the school of Champollion, therefore, feels every day the ground 
more steady beneath its tread ; every day it beholds those doubts dis- 
sipating which at first offered themselves to its disciples in the face 
of denials made by jealous or stubborn minds. ***** It is to this 
' monumental geology ' (after all) that we are indebted for the demon- 
stration of the two great historical laws that dominate over all the 
annals of Egypt; viz: the permanence of races, and the constant mo- 
bility of tongues, beliefs, and arts, — two truths which are precisely the 
inverse of that which had been for a long time admitted." 94 



III. — THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 

The term " Shemitic " (or Semitic), as it is popularly applied to 
certain races, languages, and types of physiognomy, has no reference 
to the genealogy or rather geography of the Xth chapter of Genesis, 
since it includes the Phoenicians, who, according to this old docu- 
ment, are descendants of Ham ; whilst Elam, Assur and Lud, sons 
of Shem, must be classed among races different in character and lan- 
guage from what most scholars, since Eichhorn, have been accus- 
tomed to call Shemitic. This word is now constantly used to desig- 
nate the Syro-Arab nations; that is to say, the Syrian, Phoenician, 
and Hebrew tribes (including Edom, Moab, Ammon, Midian, and 
the Nabatseans of Harran), and the Arabs both Yoktanide (Himyarite 
and ^Ethiopian) and Ishmaelite or Maadic. All those tribes and 
nations form a most striking contrast to the Arian or Japetide races, 
in language as well as in their national character. 

It is difficult to over-state the influence of the Shemites on human 

91 Des travaux modernes sur TJSgypte Ancienne, Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1855, p. 
1078. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 125 

civilization. Hence it has been said without exaggeration, that all 
the moral and religious progress of mankind may be summed up in 
the combined action of the Arian and Shemitic races : the former 
being the continuous warp, the latter the intersecting woof. 05 Whilst 
the civilization of Egypt, too proud to seek proselytes, remained iso- 
lated and spell-bound within the limits of its Mle-valley, the culture 
of the Shemites was eminently prolific and propagandist. Though 
they never exceeded thirty millions in number, 96 still their peculiar 
restlessness and commercial tendency, their migrations, deportations, 
colonizations, and wars of conquest, which dispersed them all over 
the ancient world, multiplied, as it were, their number by locomo- 
tion, and brought them into a kind of ubiquitous contact with most 
of the progressive races of mankind. The Japetides (Indo-Europeans, 
Arians, Iranians,) surpass the Shemites at least ten times in extent; 
yet, nevertheless, their civilization is deeply and lastingly affected 
by, and indebted to, the Shemites, without having been able to 
absorb and to transform them by amalgamation. Down to our days 
the Shemite race maintain their peculiar type so constantly, that their 
pedigree is still unmistakably stamped upon their features ; and it 
is a curious fact that among the lower classes in central and north- 
eastern Europe, the consciousness of a difference of race remained so 
strong both with Shemites and Japetides, as often to prevent amal- 
gamation, even where the difference of religion had ceased. 

There are principally three nations among the Shemites which 
have become of the highest importance for the history of mankind. 
To the Phoenicians, — those first explorers of the Mediterranean and 
eastern Atlantic, — merchant-princes, manufacturers, and colonizers 
of antiquity — we owe the phonetic Alphabet, and probably the 
coinage of money. East and South to Phoenicia dwelt the Hebrews, 
who, though numerically few, have by their monotheism become 
the basis of modern civilization ; whose financial genius moreover 
continues to be felt in all the great money-marts, upon which their 
invention of bills of exchange has concentrated the mobilized pro- 
perty of the world. Further to the South we meet with the Arabs, 
destroyers of idolatry, conquerors of northern Africa, civilizers of 

95 Bunsen, JEgyptms Sidle, preface, xii. 

s 6 According to Renan's, rough estimate, their actual number is the following: — 

In Arabia proper, about 6,000,000 

The Syrians and Arabs of Asiatic Turkey 6,000,000 

The Arabs of Africa: Egypt, Barbary, Morocco, Sahara, Sudan.. 10,000,000 

Shemitic Abyssinians 3,000,000 

Jews all over the world 4,000,000 

— (Hisloire el Systeme compare" rles languas almitiquee, p. 41.) 



126 THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 

the Black races, and merchants all along the shores of the Indian 
ocean. 

All these carriers of civilization never knew the feeling of plastic 
and pictorial beauty. Painting and sculpture were proscribed among 
the Hebrews and Arabs by the most sacred precepts of religion, 97 
whilst art never became national with the Phoenicians; who bor- 
rowed its forms in turn from Egyptians, Assyrians and Greeks, and 
often relapsed into their original barbarism of taste. But before we 
subject Shemitic art to a closer consideration, let us throw a glance 
on the peculiar civilization of that highly gifted race whose fortunes 
were always connected with the history of mankind, and whose 
culture modified Indo-European civilization repeatedly and in many 
respects. 

M. Ernest Renan, in his History of the Shemitic languages, 98 
describes the character of the Shemites in the most eloquent words, 
which, however, we must restrict in application to the Hebrew and 
Arab tribes, inasmuch as they evidently are incomplete as regards 
the Phoenicians and Syrians. Besides, we are bound to remind the 
reader that the author, carried away by the flow of his eloquence, is 
apt to over-state his case. We quote the following passage : 

"Without predetermining the important question of the primitive unity or diversity of 
the Arian and Shemitic languages, we must say that, in the present state of science, the 
Shemitic languages must be considered as corresponding to a distinct division of mankind. 
In fact, the character of the nations speaking them, is marked in history by as original fea- 
tures as the languages themselves, which served as a formula and boundary to their mind. 
It is true that it is less in political than in religious life that their influence has been felt. 
Antiquity shows them scarcely playing any active part in the great conquests which swept 
over Asia: the civilization of Nineveh and Babylon, in its essential features, does not belong 
to nations of that race, and before the powerful impulse given by a new creed to the Arab 
tribes, it would be in vain to seek the traces of any great Shemitic empire in history. 
But what they were unable to do in the sphere of external power they accomplished in the 
moral sphere, and we may, without exaggeration, attribute to them at least one half of the 
intellectual work of humanity. Of the two symbols of the mind striving for truth, science 
or philosophy remained entirely foreign to them; but they always understood religion with a 
superior instinct; they comprehended it, I may say, with a sense peculiar to themselves. 
The reflecting, independent, earnest, courageous, in one word the philosophical research 
of truth, seems to be the heir-loom of that Indo-European race, which, from the bottom of 
India to the extreme West and North, and from the most remote ages to modern times, has 
always sought to explain God, and man, and the world, by reasoning; and accordingly left 
behind it — as landmarks of the different stations of its history — systems of philosophy, 
always and everywhere agreeing with the laws of a logical development. But to the She- 
mitic race belong those firm and positive intuitions which removed at once the veil from 
Godhead, and without long reflection and reasoning reached the purest religious form 

97 Exodus, xx., 4; Deuteron, V., 8: — Throughout Mohammed's Kur'an these prohibi- 
tions abound. 

98 Bistoire generate et Sysieme compare' des langues semitiques. Ouvrage couronne' par 
l'lnstitut. Imprimerie Imperiale, 1855. Vol. i. p. 3, seqq. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 127 

antiquity ever knew. The birthplace of philosophy is India and Greece, amidst an inquisi- 
tive race, deeply preoccupied by the search after the secret of all things ; but the psalm and 
the prophecy, the wisdom concealed m riddles and symbols, the pure hymn, the revealed 
book, are the inheritance of the theocratic race of the Shemites. This is above all others 
the people of Godhead ; it is the people of religions, destined to create them and to carry 
them abroad. And indeed, is it not remarkable that the three monotheistic religions, 
which until now have acted the most important part in the history of civilization, the three 
religions marked by a peculiar character of duration, of fecundity and of proselytism, so 
thoroughly interlaced with one another as to appear like three branches of the same tree, 
like three expressions unequally correct of the same idea,— is it not remarkable, I repeat, 
that all the three were born among Shemitic nations, and have started from among them 
to pursue their high destinies ? There is but a few days' journey from Jerusalem to Mount 
Sinai, and from Sinai to Mecca. 

"The Shemitic race has neither the elevation of spiritualism known only to India and 
Germany, nor the feeling for measure and perfect beauty bequeathed by Greece to the 
neo-Latin nations, nor the delicate and deep sensitiveness characteristical of the Celts. 
Shemitic conscience is clear, but narrow ; it wonderfully understands unity, but cannot 
comprehend multiplicity. Monotheism sums up and explains all its features. 

" It is the glory of the Shemitic race to have in her earliest days arrived at that notion 
of Godhead which aJJ the other nations had to adopt on her example and on the faith of her 
preaching. She has never conceived the government of the world otherwise than as an 
absolute monarchy; her "Theodicy" has not advanced one single step since the book of 
Job ; the grandeur and the aberrations of Polytheism remained foreign to her. No other 
race can of itself discover Monotheism; India, which has philosophized with so much 
originality and depth, has, up to our days, not grasped it ; and all the vigour of the Hellenic 
spirit could not have sufficed to lead mankind to Monotheism without the co-operation of the 
Shemites ; but we can likewise state, that the Shemites would not have mastered the dog- 
ma of the unity of Godhead, had they not found its germ in the most imperious instincts of 
their souls and of their hearts. They were unable to conceive variety, plurality, or sex, in 
Godhead : the word goddess would be the most horrible barbarism in Hebrew." All the names 
by which the Shemites ever designated Godhead :- El, Eloh, Adon, Baal, Elion, Shaddai, 
Jehovah, Allah, even if they take the plural form, imply the supreme indivisible power 
of perfect unity. Nature, on the other hand, has little importance in Shemitic religions, — 
the desert is monotheistic. Sublime in its immense uniformity, it revealed immediately the 
idea of the infinite to men, but not the incessantly productive life, which Nature, where she 
is more prolific, imparts to other nations. This is the reason why Arabia was always the 
bulwark of the most exalted monotheism ; for it would be a mistake to seek in Mohammed 
the founder of monotheism in Arabia. The worship of the Supreme God (Allah ia&la) was 
always at the bottom of Arabian religion." 

" The Shemites never had mythology. The clear and precise way in which they conceived 
Godhead as distinct from the world, not begetting and not begotten, and having no like, 
excluded that grand poetry in which India, Persia, Greece [and the Teutonic races], gave 
vent to their imagination, leaving the boundaries between God, mankind, and nature, unde- 
fined and floating. Mythology is the expression of pantheism in religion, and the Shemitic 
spirit is the most antagonistic to pantheism. What a distance between the simple concep- 

99 The author forgets, apparently, the goddesses of Syria and Phoenicia, the female idols 
destroyed by the Arabs upon their conversion to Islam, and the Shemitic adoration of the 
Baetyles (Beth-El), the shapeless stones so often figured on coins. The black stone of the 
Kaaba belongs to the same class, and reminds us nearly of Fetishism. [Fresnel, when 
consul at Djidda, sent his slave to Mecca, and learned from him that, although the pilgrims 
had nearly kissed off the features, the stone still preserves the remains of a human face! 
(IVme Lettre, "Djeddeh, Jan. 1838."— Journal Asiatique.)—G. R,. G.] 



128 THE AET OF THE SHEMITES. 

tion of a God, distinct from the world, which he forms according to his will, as a vase is 
moulded by the hands of the potter, and those Indo-European theogonies, attributing a 
divine soul to Nature, conceiving life as a struggle, and the world as a perpetual change, 
thus carrying, as it were, the ideas of revolution and progress among the dynasties of 
Gods! 

" The intolerance of the Shemites is the natural result of their monotheism. Indo-Euro- 
pean nations, before their conversion to Shemitic ideas, never considered their religions as 
an absolute truth ; they took them rather for a family heir-loom, and remained equally 
foreign to intolerance and to proselytism. 100 It is, therefore, exclusively among Indo-Euro- 
peans that we meet with freedom of thought, with a spirit of criticism and of individual 
research. The Shemites, on the contrary, aspiring to realize a worship independent of any 
provincial variations, were led in consistency to declare all other religions than their own 
to be mischievous. In this sense, intolerance is a Shemitic fact, and a portion of the in- 
heritance, good and bad, which this race has bequeathed to mankind. 

"The absence of philosophical and scientific culture among the Shemites maybe derived 
from that want of breadth and diversity, and therefore of an analytical turn of mind, which 
characterizes them. The faculties begetting mythology are, in fact, the same which beget 
philosophy. Stricken by the unity of the laws governing the world, the Shemites saw in the 
development of things nothing but the unalterable fulfilment of the will of a superior being ; 
they never conceived multiplicity in nature. But the conception of multiplicity in the universe 
becomes polytheism with nations which are still in their infancy, and science with nations 
that have arrived at maturity. This is the reason why Shemitic wisdom never advanced 
beyond the proverb and the parable, — points of departure for Greek philosophy. The books 
of Job and Ecclesiastes, which represent the highest culmination of Shemitic philosophy, 
turn the problem over and over again in all directions, without advancing one step nearer 
to the solution ; to them the dialectic and close reasoning of Socrates is altogether wanting: 
even when Ecclesiastes seems to approach a solution, it is only in order to arrive at 
formulas antagonistic to science, such as "Vanity of vanities" — -"nothing is new under 
the sun," — "he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," — formulas the result of 
which is, to enjoy life, and to serve God: and indeed these are the two poles of Shemitic 
existence. 

" The Shemites are nearly entirely devoid of inquisitiveness. Their idea of the power 
of God is such, that nothing can astonish them. To the most surprising accounts, to sights 
most likely to strike him, the Arab opposes but one reflection, "God is powerful!" whilst, 
when in doubt, he avoids to come to a conclusion, and after having expounded the reasons 
for and against, escapes from decision by the formula 'God knows it!' 

" The poetry of the Shemitic nations is distinguished by the same want of variety. The 
eminently subjective character of Arabic and Hebrew poetry results from another essential 
feature of Shemitic spirit, the complete absence of creative imagination, and accordingly 
of fiction. 

"Hence, amongthese peoples, we may explain the absolute absence of plastic arts. Even 
tho adornments of manuscripts by which Turks and Persians have displayed such a lively sen- 
timent for color, is antipathetic to the Arabs, and altogether unknown in countries where 
the Arab spirit has remained untainted, as for instance in Morocco. Music, of all the arts 
most subjective, is the only one known to Shemites. Painting and sculpture have always 
been banished from them by religious prohibition ; their realism cannot be reconciled with 
oreative invention, which is the essential condition of the two arts. A Mussulman to whom 
the traveller Bruce showed the painting of a fish, asked him, after a moment of surprise : " If 
this fish, on the day of judgment, rises against thee and accuses thee by saying, Thou hast 

100 This does not exclude their rigor against apostasy or infidelity at different periods of 
their history, since it implied an attack upon their national existence. With the Greeks, 
for instance, religion was intimately connected with nationality, and their nationality being 
exclusive, (for every foreigner was a barbarian.) proselytism became impossible. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 129 

given me a body, but no living soul, what -wilt thou reply V The anathemas against any 
figured representation,. repeated over and over again in the Mosaic books, and the icono- 
clastic zeal of Mohammed, evidently prove the tendency of those nations to take the statue 
for a real individual being. Artistic race's, accustomed to detach the symbol from the idea, 
■were not obliged to act with such severity." 

Kenan's remarks, as already mentioned, apply principally to the 
monotheistic branches of the Shemitic race, at their secondary stage 
of development : he ignores the peculiarities of the Phoenician nation, 
yet mankind owes nearly as much to the polytheistic branch of the 
Shemites, in spite of their voluptuous and cruel worship, including 
human sacrifices and indescribable abominations, so denounced in 
Hebrew and later Arabian literature, — as to their southern brethren 
of higher and purer morals. According to the authors of antiquity, 
as well as to all modern philologists, the pure phonetic alphabet is 
an invention of the Phoenician mind. 101 All the different phonetic 
alphabets of the world, — perhaps with the exception of the cuneatic 
and Hindoo (Lat and Devanagiri) writing, — have originated from the 
Phoenician letters ; the Arian nations of course eliminating the She- 
mitic gutturals, and replacing them by their own peculiar modifica- 
tions of the sound. The hieroglyphics of Egypt remained confined 
to the Nile-valley ; the Devanagiri to the two Indian peninsulas and 
their dependencies ; the cuneiform character to the basin of the 
Tigris and Euphrates, and to the highland flanking it to the east ; 
whereas the Phoenician alphabet and those derived from it have been 
diffused over all the white race, not only Shemites, but Japetides and 
Turanians ; and this fact practically proves the diffusion of Shemitic 
influence. 

Second in importance only to the phonetic alphabet, is the inven- 
tion of coined money, which is again Phoenician ; although the Isle 
of ^Egina and the empire of Lydia made rival claims to the priority 
of the invention. 102 But ^Egina, the small island between Attica 

101 Compare for authorities: Types of Mankind, "Palasographic excursus on the art of 
writing, by Geo. R. Gliddon ;" and Renan, Op. cit., I. p. 67. " L'ecriture alphabetique est 
depuis une haute antiquity le privilege particulier des Semites. C'est aux Semites que 
le monde doit l'alphabet de 22 lettres." 

102 The earliest standard of coinage and of weights and measures in Greece was certainly 
that of iEgina, the invention of which was attributed to Pheidon, king of Argos, and lord 
of -33gina. Still, criticism cannot but take Pheidon for a semi-mythical person, and the 
authorities about his epoch are irreconcilably at variance with one another. The Parian- 
marble chronicle places him about 895 B. c. : Pausanias and Strabo between 770-730 B. c, 
whilst Herodotus (VII. 27) connects him with events which took place [ about 600 B. c. 
Ottfeied Muller, therefore (Dorier, iii. 6) assumes two Pheidons ; and Weissenboko 
suggests Pausanias may have placed him originally in the 26th Olympiad, which, by an error 
of the copyist, became the 6th in the extant MS. Whatever be the epoch of Pheidon, so 
much is certain, that the iEginean standard of weights and measures is not his invention. 
Boeck, in his " Metrologische TTntersuchungen," has established the fact that it was borrowed 
from Babylon ; Pheidon can therefore have only introduced it into Greece. 

9 



130 THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 

and the Peloponnesus, though rich in silver-mines, possessed neither 
colonies nor extensive and uninterrupted foreign commerce, which 
alone can have given rise to the desire of a circulating medium of 
currency. • Lydia, equally devoid of colonies and foreign extensive 
commerce, had not even a supply of gold before the conquest of 
Phrygia. The first money could not have been struck by any but 
a merchant nation. Neither Pharaonic Egypt, nor the empires of 
Assyria and Babylon, nor the Hebrew kingdoms, knew the use of 
coins. They weighed the gold and silver as the price for commodi- 
ties bought and sold; but they never tried to divide it into equal 
pieces, or to mark it according to its weight and value. It was at a 
comparatively late period, scarcely prior to the seventh century 
before our era, that gold and silver were struck by public authority, 
to be the circulating medium. Alcidamas, the Athenian rhetor of 
the fourth century B. c, tells us, that " coins were invented by the 
Phoenicians, they being the wisest and most cunning of the Barba- 
rians ; — out of the ingot they took equal portions and stamped them 
with a sign, according to the weight, the heavier and the lighter." m 
— 'OSvSaevs xaTa itpoSoti'iag riaXau,-/](5ou<:. — (See Alcid.) 

Such are the lasting benefits mankind owes to the Shemitic race, 
which, besides, was in antiquity the forerunner of Indo-European 
civilization on the Mediterranean, and along the Eastern shores of 
the Atlantic, and subsequently again in Hindostan and Java during 
the middle ages. Even now it paves the way for European culture 
and commerce in the Soodan, and central Africa. These highly gifted 
carriers of civilization never rose, notwithstanding, to any eminence 
in imitative arts, and were unable to invent or establish a national 
style of painting or sculpture. As to the Hebrews and the Arabs, 
this deficiency is often attributed to the prohibitions of the Penta- 
teuch and the Kur'an : but it will probably be safer to derive the 
prohibition from the want of artistical feeling among the nations for 
whom the law was framed. Besides, the Arabs, even before Mo- 
hammed, had few or no idols of human form, no plastical art and 
no pictures ; at the same time that the Kur'an could not prevent the 

103 The standard weights of Nimrood, in the British Museum, carry now even the Babylonian 
talent further back, to Assyria, and it is not unimportant that their inscriptions are either 
purely Phoenician, or bilingual. — As to coinage, it is everywhere originally connected with 
the standard of weights : it is its result, its most practical application to silver and gold as 
measures of value. The standard of measures must have preceded the standard of coinage, 
and cannot be a contemporary invention. Pheidon may indeed have been the first who 
struck coin in Greece, and have introduced coinage together with the Babylonian standard 
of measures and weights from Phoenicia ; but the Greek tradition which attributes to him 
the invention both of the standard' of weights and of coinage, is as illogical as regards 
coins, as it is historically false as regards weights. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 131 

Perso-Aflghan Mussulmans, both the SheeS and the Sunnee, to con- 
tinue drawing and painting, and even sculpturing reliefs. Down to 
the present day, portraits are painted at Delhi and Cabool and Tehe- 
ran by true believers, without any religious scruples ; whereas the 
Arab envoy of the Sultan of Morocco to Queen Victoria, whose 
daguerreotype was taken without his knowledge at Claudet's in Re- 
gent Street, felt himself both insulted and defiled for having had 
his form " stolen from him," as he expressed himself. 

With the polytheistic branch of the Shemites, sculpture and paint- 
ing were not prohibited by religion ; and still no national style of 
art ever developed itself among the Syrians and Phoenicians, notwith- 
standing their wealth and industry, and love of display. 

The extent and number of the monuments of art in Syria, Phoe- 
nicia, Palestine, and Idumsea, and of those remains which, by their 
Phoenician or Punic inscription, are designated as Shemitic, is not 
at all insignificant ; although, measured by the standard of Egyptian, 
Greek, or Etruscan antiquities, they are, indeed, comparatively small. 
Still, these monuments form together no homogeneous class, charac- 
terized by certain peculiarities common to them all. Nothing but 
the place where they were found, or the Phoenician characters with 
which they are inscribed, designates them as Shernitic. They might 
all have been made by foreigners : Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, 
Etruscans, or barbarians. Of the ruins still extant, Petra, the rock- 
town of the ISTabatseans, exhibits late Greek ; Baalbek (Heliopolis) 
and Palmyra, late Roman forms of architecture. The rock-tombs 
of Jerusalem were evidently excavated by artists perfectly conversant 
with the Dorian column, who remained faithful to the Hellenic spirit 
of art, notwithstanding that they introduced grapes and palm-trees, 
and some oriental forms, into the decoration of their rock-structures. 

As to Shemitic statues and reliefs, the most important among them 
undoubtedly is the black basahVsareophagus of Eshmunazar, king of 
Sidon, discovered in February, 1855, near Sayda, the old Sidon. The 
French Consul, M. Peretie, acquired it, and sent it to France, where 
it has been deposited in the Louvre, as a worthy companion to the 
kingly monuments of Egyptian Pharaohs and Assyrian .monarchs. 
The Phoenician inscription of the sarcophagus, read and analyzed by 
the Due de Luynes, 104 is one of the most striking expressions of She- 
mitic feelings. It runs as follows : 

104 Mr. Dietrich of Marburg, Dr. Riidiger, Prof. Land, and others, likewise published 
translations of, and observations on, this inscription, independently of the French Duke, 
•whose translation, however, was read at the Institute previously to the publications of the 
learned Germans. Besides, his Memoir, published in 1856, is by far more complete as 
regards the analysis of the inscription, and the geographical, philological, and historical 



132 THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 

" In the month of Bui, in the fourteenth year of the reign of me, Eshmunazar, king of the 
Sidonians, son of king Thebunath, king of the Sidonians, the king Eshmunazar spake and 
said : 

" Amidst my feasts and my perfumed wines, I am ravished from the assembly of men to 
pronounce a lamentation and to die, and to remain lying in this coffin, in this tomb, in the 
place of sepulture which I have constructed. 

•' By this lamentation I conjure any royal race and any man, not to open this funeral 
bed, not to search the asylum of the faithful (for there are effigies of gods among them,) 
not to remove the cover of this coffin, not to build upon the elevation of this funeral bed, 
the elevation of the bed of my sleep, even should some one say : ' Listen not to those who 
are humiliated, (in death) : for any royal race, or any man who should defile the elevation 
of this funeral bed, whether he removes the cover of this coffin, or builds upon the monu- 
ment which covers it, may they have no funeral bed reserved for themselves among the 
Rephaim (shadows) : may they be deprived of sepulture, leaving behind them neither sons 
nor posterity : and may the great Gods (Alonim) keep them confined in hell. 

" If it be a royal race, may its accursed crime fall back upon their children up to the 
extinction of their posterity. 

" If it is a (private) man who opens the elevation of this funeral bed, or who removes the 
cover of my coffin, and the corpses of the royal family, this man is sacrilegious. 

" May his stem not grow up from the roots, and not bring forth fruits ; may he be marked 
by the reprobation among the living under the sun. 

" For, worthy to be pitied, I have been ravished amidst my banquets and my perfumed 
wines, to leave the assembly of men, and to pronounce my lamentation, then to die. 

"I rest here, in truth, I, Eshmunazar, king of the Sidonians, son of king Thebunath, 
king of Sidonians, son of the son of king Eshmunazar, king of the Sidonians, and with me, 
my mother Amestoreth, who was priestess of Astarte, in the palace of the queen, daughter 
of king Eshmunazar, king of the Sidonians, who built the temple of the great Gods, the 
temple of Astarte at Sidon, the maritime town, and we both have consecrated magnificent 
offerings to the goddess Astarte. With me rests also Onchanna, who, in honor of Eshmun, 
the sacred God, built Enedalila in the mountain, and made me magnificent presents; and 
Onchanna, who built temples to the great Gods of the Sidonians, at Sidon, the maritime 
town, the temple of Baal-Sidon, and the temple of Astarte, glory of Baal, so that in recom- 
pense of his piety, the Lord Adon Milchon granted us the towns of Dora and Japhia, with 
their extensive territories for wheat, which are above Dan, a pledge of the possession of the 
strong places which I have founded, and which he has finished as bulwarks of our bounda- 
ries endowed for the Sidonians forever. 

" By this lamentation I adjure every royal race and every man, that they will not open 
nor overthrow the elevation of my tomb, that they will not build upon the construction 
which covers this funeral bed, that they will not remove my coffin from my funeral bed, in 
fear lest the great God should imprison them. Otherwise may that royal race, those sacri- 
legious men and their posterity, be destroyed for ever !" 

The inscription leaves no possible doubt that we have the coffin of 
a king of Sidon before us; and still, if it had been found without an 
inscription, nobody would have doubted its Egyptian origin. 105 The 
mummy-shaped form of the .coffin is identical with the basalt-sarco- 
phaguses of the XLXth dynasty ; and the peculiar conventional 
beard, the head-dress, the necklace, and the hawk-beads of Horus on 

disquisitions connected with it. — (Memoire sur le Sarcophage et V inscription funeraire d'Esmu- 
nazar, roi de Sidon, par H. d' Albert de Lutnes, Paris, 1856, p. 8, 9. [Equally Shemitic 
in spirit, is the Punic "sacrificial ritual" of Marseilles, as rendered by De Saulcy (Mem. 
de I' Acad. R. des Inscrip., .1847, XVII., 1= partie.— G. R. G.] 

106 [See "Inscription Pheniciemie sur une Pierre a libation dn Se'raphe'ura de Memphis," 
by the Duo de Ldynes, Bui. Archeve de V Alhenceum Franco-is, August-Sept., 1855. — G. R. G.] 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 



.33 



the shoulders of the king, all completely correspond with the three 
coffins of the family of king Amasis, sent by Abbas Pasha as a 
present to the Prince of Leuchtenberg. We are, therefore, author- 
Fig. 19. 




EsMUNAZAR. 



ized to infer with the Due de Luynes that Esmunazar was a contem- 
porary of Amasis. And indeed, we find that Apries of Egypt, about 
B. c. 574, invaded Phoenicia, captured Sidon, and probably reduced 
this very king to a state of dependency on Egypt; which might 
account for the Egyptian style of king Esmunazar's coffin, unless 
we can prove that Phoenician sculpture was always a daughter of 
Egyptian art. Such an assumption might be maintained by the Pha- 
raonic style of the type of some brass coins of the island of Malta, 
undoubtedly a Phoenician colony. But although the dress of the 
female head which we distinguish on those coins, is evidently Egyp- 
tian, and its ornament is the royal "Atf," — the crown of Osiris and 
other deities, composed of a conical cap, flanked by two ostrich 
feathers with a disk in front, placed on the horns of a goat, — still, 
the reverse of the medal presents an entirely different style, viz : an 
imitation of Assyrian art. It is a kneeling man with four wings. 
But the coin of Malta is not the only instance of Assyrian style on 
Phoenician monuments. Br. Layard has published several cylinder 
seals with the Phoenician name of the proprietor, engraved in Phoeni- 
cian characters. 106 The lion-shaped weights in the Br. Museum, found 
in the palace of Nimrood, 107 bear, likewise, Phoenician inscriptions ; 
but they cannot fairly be taken for works of Shemitic artists. They 
prove only, by their bilingual inscription, that there were two diffe- 
rent nationalities in the empire, and that the system of weights and 
measures must have been peculiarly important to the Shemitic portion 
of its inhabitants — no other instances of bilingual official inscriptions 

100 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 606: — Luynes, Sarcophage, p. 59. 

107 Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi. 96: — Nineveh and Babylon, p. 605. 



134 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 



Fig. 20. 




MOABITE. 



having been discovered among the remains of Assyria. "We are 
compelled, therefore, to dismiss the idea that Phoenician art was a 
development of Egyptian style, and must infer that the Shemites 
borrowed their artistical forms from the neighboring nations. Thus, 
the so-called Moabite relief, from Redjom el-Aabed, published by 
De Saulcy, 108 is closely allied in style to the Assyrian reliefs ; and it 

might be taken for the work of 
the proud conquerors of Palestine, 
were not the type of the face, and 
the absence of the characteristi- 
cal long-flowing Assyrian tresses 
rather Shemitic. Again, the 
lost Scriptural and mysteriously- 
engraved gems Urim and Thum- 
mim, which adorned the breast- 
plate of the Hebrew high-priest, 109 
bear philologically such an affi- 
nity to the Egyptian Urseus and 
Thmei, judicial symbols of power 
and truth, that, as some Egyptolo- 
gists have suggested, they might 
Without laying too great stress 
on this suggestion, which cannot be either proved or disproved, we 
must admit, that at the latest period of the Hebrew monarchy, the 
imagery of the prophets, — for instance, the vision of Ezekiel, — is 
entirely Assyrian. The eagle, the winged lion, lull and man, which 
finally became the symbols of the four Evangelists, 110 are now pretty 
familiar to us by the Assyrian reliefs of the Louvre and of the British 
Museum. So are the revolving winged orbs of the prophets ; evidently 
the same symbolical emblems which, among the Egyptians, designated 
Hoe-hat, the celestial sun, 111 and were transferred to Nineveh and 
Persepolis as the symbol of the Feruers or Guardian Angels. 

™Voyage dans les Terres bibliques, 1853, Atlas, pi. XVIII : — Types of Mankind, p. 530. 
109 Lanoi, La Sagra Scrittura illustrata, Roma, 1827; pp. 209-235, and Plates: — Idem, 
Lellre a H.Prisse, pp. 84-5. 

no [-<< j; s t vitulus Lucas, leo Marcus, avisque Johannes, 
Est homo Matthasus, quatuor ista Deus ; 
Est homo nascendo, vitulus mortem patiendo, 
Est leo snrgendo, sed avis ad summa petendo." 
(Sjobekg, Pa' Arch'dologisska Sallskapets kostnad och Forlag, Stockholm, 1822, p. 43): — 
Munter. (Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellung der alien Christen, Altona, 1825, p. 25, pp. 44-5,) 
gives the patristic citations from Irenseus, Augustine, Jerome, &c. " Rident autem Judsei et 
Arabes," adds old Gaffakelm. — G. R. G.] 

111 \_Oiia JSgypliaca, pp. 95-6 : — Types of Mankind, p. 602. I re-allude to this because I 
find in Basnage (Hist, of the Jews, p. 248) that the texts of Isaiah and Malachi were 
explained by the sun "with wings" as far back as 1701. — G. R. G.] 



have been borrowed from Egypt. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 



135 



Fig. 21. 



But the Phoenicians had no peculiar predilection for the forms of 
art connected with the civilization of hieroglyphics, or of the cunei- 
form character. Unable themselves to create a national style of art, 
they adopted Grecian art instead. The types of all the coins of 
Phoenicia and Cilicia, whether "autonomous" or inscribed with the 
name of the Persian Satraps, are Greek as regards the style ; so too 
are the medals of the Carthaginian towns of Sicily, vying in beauty 
with the best Syracusan medals. "Their elegance," according to 
Gerhard, 111 "is a proof, not of proficiency, but of the absence of 
national art, since there only can a foreign style be introduced, where 
it has no national forms to displace." Even the Cypriot-head, dis- 
covered by Ross and published by Gerhard, 112 is in its principal forms 
entirely Greek, reminding us of the 
earliest Hellenic style ; and it is therefore 
classed by Gerhard among the specimens 
of archaic Greek sculpture, although 
found on an originally Phoenician island, 
because we know of no other instance of 
a similar style of Shemitic art, at the 
same time that the Greek reliefs of Seli- 
nus are analogous to it. 

The soil of Carthage and of northern 
Africa, over which Punic domination 
extended, has not yielded any monu- 
ments of Carthaginian art, all such traces 
of Punic civilization having been com- 
pletely swept away by the Roman con- 
quest and its superimposed civilization. Accordingly, it is to Spain 
and to Sardinia that we have to look for specimens of Carthaginian 
art. But the bronze statuettes disinterred from the Punic mounds of 
Sardinia {Nuraghe) 113 are so barbarous and unartistical, that we might 
have ascribed them to indigenous tribes, had we not found entirely 
analogous idols on some islands of the Archipelago, 114 and at Mount 
Lebanon. David Urquhart, M. P., the well-known oriental traveller 
and diplomatist, brought five such statuettes from among the 
Maronites, discovered during his stay in Syria, which now enrich 
my collection of antiquities. Similar monuments were procured 
from ancient Tyre by the late M. Borel, French Consul at Smyrna. 




Ctpkiot Venus. 



111 Uber die Kunst der Phcenicicr, Berlin, 1848, p. 21. 

112 Ibidem, pi. VIII. 2, " Kyprische Vemisidole." 

« 3 Cf. De la Marmora ( Voyage en Sardaignede 1829 <J 1836,) for plates and descriptions. 
u * Gerhard, loco citato. 



136 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 



"We publish some of these bronzes as specimens of the original and 
unadulterated Sbemitie art. 

The first, in fig. 22, is a statuette with some Egyptian touches; but 

Kg. 22. 




Moloch, (Pulszky Coll.) 

the next, and fig. 23, are of progressive barbarism — all characterized 
by the peculiar head-dress in the shape of a horn, the " exalted horn " 
of the Scriptures, which, down to the present day, has endured in the 
national ornament of the Druse females. The ugliness of these, no 
less than of the Sardinian statuettes, — scarcely reconcilable with com- 
monly received ideas about the wealth and display of the merchant- 
princes of Sidon and Tyre, and the power of Carthage, — ought not to 
throw a doubt upon their Shemitic origin; for, according to Herod- 
otus, 115 ugly and distorted representations were not excluded from 
among the Phoenician forms of godhead. 

"5 Hekodotds, IH. 37. 



THE ART OF THE SHEMITES. 
Fig. 23. 



137 




Eshmun, (Puhzhj Coll.) 

" Winckelman's guess," says Gerhard, in his often quoted essay, "that elegance might 
have been the principal feature of Phoenician art, is not borne out by the extant idols ; these 
are rude and intended to strike terror, like the idols of Mexico. 116 .... All the oriental ele- 
ments in Greek and^Etruscan art," he continues, "formerly attributed to Phoenician influ- 
ence, can be traced to quite different countries of Asia, first to Candaules and Croesus of 
Lydia, but if we ascend to the source — to Babylon and Nineveh. According to the remains 
of Phoenician monuments, the merit of this nation must be restricted to the clever use of 
some peculiar materials, for instance, bronze, gold, and ivory, glass and purple ; and to 
their mediating assistance afforded to the higher art of inner Asia, by copying their forms, 
and by carrying them to the west." 

The Shemites being destitute of higher national art, it is to the 
Egyptian and Assyrian monuments that we are indebted for the pre- 
servation of the ancient Shemitie cast of features, which has remained 
unchanged for thirty and more centuries. 117 We could not have 
recognized them in the works of their own artists, who either imi- 

116 Gerhard, op. cil., p. 17, 21. 

u ' See examples in Types of Mankind, chapter iv. "Physical History of the Jews." 



138 THE NATIONS OF THE 

tated the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks, or relapsed into com- 
plete barbarism, but never felt any inward impulse of their own to 
reproduce nature in sculpture and painting. 

Our researches on Shemitic art clearly establish the fact, that, highly 
gifted races may be unartistic, and that neither wealth nor love of 
display, neither inventive genius nor culture, can create art among 
them. 



IV. — THE NATIONS OF THE CUNEIFORM "WRITING. 

The country lying east of the homestead of the Shemites, 
embracing the plain of Mesopotamia, and the bighlands flanking the 
Tigris up to the Persian desert, was in antiquity always the seat of 
great empires, — expanding principally towards the west, often threat- 
ening and sometimes subduing the Asiatic coast of the Mediterra- 
nean, and- extending its influence to Europe. The populations dwell- 
ing along the Euphrates and Tigris, and on the Armenian and Per- 
sian table-land — were not homogeneous. Cushite, Shemitic, Arian, 
and Turanian elements struggled here against one another : the scep- 
tre of the "West Asiatic empire often changed hands amongst them, 
but always within the limits mentioned above; being transferred 
from Nineveh to Babylon, from Babylon to Ecbatana and Persepolis ; 
again to Seleucia, thence to Ctesiphon, and at last to Bagdad. The 
national peculiarities of this empire have remained in many respects 
a puzzle for the ethnologists. "What was the precise character of the 
languages of Assyria and Babylonia — what the seat of the Scythians 
who invaded the empire, and ruled it for twenty-eight years ; and 
what the national type of the Medes, and perhaps even of the Par- 
tisans, — are difficulties not yet solved, which require further investi- 
gation. 

All modern chronologists and philologists agree about the ancient 
Persians, that they were pure and unmixed Japetides, or Indo- 
Europeans ; so much so, that the name by which they themselves 
called their race — Arians or Iranians — has been adopted for designa- 
ting the peculiar family of the white race to which they belong. 
The Medes 118 and the Parthians, on the other side, are classed among 
the Turanians, or Scythians, or Turk-Tartars. As to the Assyrians 
and Babylonians, the following is the result of the latest researches : 

The Chevalier Bunsen, — whose eminently suggestive works will 
remain of the highest value, even when a more thorough knowledge 
of the subjects he treats may have modified many of his hypotheses 

118 According to Stkabo, the difference of the Mede and Persian languages was a dif- 
ference of mere dialect: still, our scholars unanimously designate the Scythian (or Tura-" 
nian), second inscription of Behistun, by the word Median. 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 139 

and conclusions ; Max Muller, the well-known Sanscrit scholar ; 
and Lepsius, the celebrated Egyptologist; are the foremost of a 
school which tries to find out a union between the Shemitic and the 
Arian races, and to derive all the languages of Europe and of Asia 
from one common original stock. According to their theory, the 
languages of the old world may be classed into four distinct families : 
Hamitic or Cushite, Shemitic, Turanian (including the Chinese, the 
Turk-Tartars and Malays,) and Arian. Proceeding farther, they 
assert that the Hamitic is but an earlier form of the Shemitic, whilst 
the Arian is for them nothing more than the development of the 
Turanian. Having reduced the four families to two, they seek a 
union between the Shemitic and Arian, and believe they have 
found the traces of this original unity, first in the ancient Egyptian, 
and again in the Babylonian and Assyrian. 119 

However, these conclusions are rather speculative hypotheses than 
acquired scientific facts. Lepsius acknowledges that the Coptic 
forms a branch as distinct and as distant from the Shemitic, as the She- 
mitic is from the Arian ; whilst Bunsen and Max Muller admit the 
same, by placing that which they call the sacred language of Assyria 
and Babylonia " between Hamitism, or the ante-historical Shemitism 
in Egypt, and the historical Shemitic languages;" 120 and again, by 
stating that "the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylon exhibit to us a 
language in the transition from primordial to historical Shemi- 
tism." 121 

Renan, on the other hand, cannot imagine how any Shemitic 
language could have been written in a non-Shemitic alphabet : 

"In early antiquity, language and alphabet are inseparable: the cuneiform characters 
may have been adopted by nations having no alphabet of their own ; but how should the 
imperfect, ideographic, system of Assyria and Babylon have served for writing languages 
which had a more developed system of writing of their own ?" 

Besides, according to him, the national history of the Assyrians 
and Babylonians has no Shemitic characters. 

"Shemitic life is simple and narrow, patriarchal, and hostile to centralization. The 
Shemite disUkes manual labor, and the patience' and discipline — such as raised gigantic 
structures like those of Egypt and Assyria, — are wanting with him. At Nineveh, on the 
contrary, we meet with a great development of material civilization, with an absolute 
monarchy, with nourishing imitative art, with a grand style of architecture, with a mytho- 
logy impregnated with Arian ideas, with a tendency to see an incarnation of Godhead in 
the king, and with a spirit of conquest and centralization." 

119 Bcnsen and Max MBxlek, Outlines of the Philosophy of History : — Lepsius, 1st, Anord- 
nung und Verwandlschaft des Semilischen, Indischen, Altpersischen und Allcethiopischen Alpha- 
betes; and lid, XTrsprung und Verwandlschaft der Zahlworter. 

120 Sippolylus, III, p. 183, seqq. : — Outlines, I, p. 183, seqq. 
la Livre I, Chap. II. <S 3, 4. 



140 THE NATIONS OF THE 

The Chaldeans of Babylonia, with their magnificent robes, riding 
on high-spirited horses, and wearing high tiaras, as described by 
Ezekiel, 122 are therefore, for B,enan, not Shemites, but a branch of 
the ruling race of Assyria; which, according to him, was Arian. 
As to the names of the kings : Tiglath-Pilesar, Sennacherib, Sargon, 
Evil-Merodach, Markodempal, &c. — they are contrary to the funda- 
mental laws of the Syro-Arabic languages, and cannot be reduced to 
Sbemitic roots. But again, most of the towns and rivers in Assyria 
and Babylonia have Shemitic names; whence he infers that the 
bulk of the population in Mesopotamia must have been Shemitic, 
but subject to a conquering race of Arians, which formed a military 
aristocracy and a religious caste, both summed up in the person of 
the absolute king. 

We cannot but admit the force of Benan's reasoning ; and his con- 
clusion about the two nationalities in Assyria and Babylonia 123 (that 
is to say, about the Shemitic character of the bulk of the people with 
a ruling race of Iranians), is supported by the Shemitic and bilingual 
inscriptions on some Assyrian monuments already noticed. This 
view of a mixed population inhabiting Mesopotamia, sufficiently ex- 
plains the semi-Shemitic peculiarities of the languages of the cunei- 
form inscriptions on the monuments of Nineveh and Babylon : and 
the reasoning of the learned author of " the Genesis of the Earth 
and of Man," leads to the same result when he observes, — " a mixed 
language obtaining in one country indicates a mixture of races ; and 
the grammar of that language, by its being unmixed or mixed, is an 
index to the number and power of one race in comparison with the 
other at the period of the formation of the mixed language." 124 Ac- 
cording to this rule, the Assyrian aud Babylonian, instead of forming 
the "transition between ante-historical and historical Shemitism," 
must be considered as the result of the mixture of Shemitic and 
Arian elements, at any rate not anterior to historical Shemitism. 
The monuments of art discovered in Assyria and Babylonia lead to 
the same conclusion, viz : that the ruling classes were Arian, since all 
the sculptures connected with cuneiform inscriptions bear the same 
Arian character at Nineveh as well as at Persepolis. In fact, the 
civilization and the fundamental ideas about political government 
and provincial administration are identical among all the nations 
making use of the cuneiform character, though we must admit dif- 

122 Chapter XXIII. 

12 3 Gesenius had, long before Kenan, insisted upon the northern origin of the Chaldeans 
as a conquering raoe in Babylonia, different from the bulk of the population. 

124 Edited by R. Stewart Poole, Edinburgh, 1856, p. 155: — compare Types of Mankind, 
1854, voce " Elam," pp. 533-4. 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 141 

ferent degrees of development. The Babylonian inscriptions abound 
with ideographic groups reminding us of the hieroglyphics of Egypt, 
whilst the Arians of Persia borrowed the phonetic system from the 
Shemites, but retained the form of the wedge. As to their artistic 
capacities, the Assyrians occupy the highest rank, in some of the bas- 
reliefs of Sardanapalus second only to the Greeks. Some of the Per- 
sepolitan seals are likewise of a high, chaste, and sober style of art, ■ 
peculiarly charming by the introduction of picturesque folds into the 
heavy Assyrian garments. The Babylonians, with whom tbe Shemi- 
tic element always preponderated, were little artistic ; inscriptions 
were more copious with them than reliefs, and their sculptures are 
without exception rude in execution, and monotonous in conception. 
It is difficult to speak about the origin or the early history of 
Assyrian art. The earliest mention of the empire occurs in the 
hieroglyphic annals of Thutmosis HE, the great conquering Pharaoh 
of the XVIIth dynasty, about the seventeenth century, b. c, who 
caused his victories to be recorded on a slab deciphered by Mr. 
Birch. 135 "We hear of the defeat of the king of Naharaina (Mesopo- 
tamia) ; or of the chief of Saenhar, (Shinar) bringing as tribute blue- 
stone of Babilu, (lapis-lazuli from Babylon). Under Amenophis m, 
we find Asuru, Naharaina and Saenhar, again among the conquered 
countries. 126 And, as corroborative of the truth of the hieroglyphical 
records, Egyptian scarabs with the engraved names of these two 
kings have been found in various parts of Mesopotamia. 127 At a 
somewhat later period, under the XXth dynasty of the Ramessides, 
the chief of Bakhtan 12B offers his daughter to Ramesses XIV, who 
marries her ; and soon after, about the time when the Ark of the 
Covenant was taken from the Israelites by the Philistines, sent the 
Ark of the Egyptian God, Khons, from Thebes to Bashan, as a remedy 
to his sister-in-law, who was possessed by an evil spirit. 129 The 
intercourse between Egypt and Mesopotamia became soon still more 
close and intimate. 130 We find Pharaoh Pihem, the head of the XXIst 
dynasty, journeying on a friendly visit to Mesopotamia : m moreover, 
his successors and their descendants, — to judge by their names, — 

125 Bikch, The Annals of Thotmes III, vol. v. of the Transactions of the Roy, Soo. 
Liter. — New series, p. 116. 

126 Lepshjs, Lenkmaler III. Bl. 88. 

127 Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 281 : — Types of Mankind, p. 133, fig. 32. 

128 Egyptologists identify Bakhtan with the scriptural Bashan "in upper Mesopotamia," 
as they call it, though it is rather hold to call Mesopotamia the country bordering on the 
tribe of Manasseh. — In consequence, some favor Ecbatana. 

129 Birch, Transactions R. Soc. Lit. IV. p. 16 & f. 
«° Lepsius, Denkmaler III, Bl. 249. 

"» Birch, Transactions R. Soc. Lit. 1848, p. 164 & f. 



142 THE NATIONS OF THE 

are connected with Mesopotamia; inasmuch as the names of Osor- 
kon, (Sargon) Takeloth (Tiglath), Nimrod, and Keromama [Semi- 
ramis,) are altogether un-Egyptian, and strongly Assyrian. About 
this time (9th and 10th century b. c.) ivory combs, and decorative 
sculptures of Assyrian design became fashionable in Egypt, 133 and 
show that the Assyrian style of art was already fully developed. The 
celebrated black marble obelisk of king Divanubar (Deleboras ?), in 
the British Museum, belongs to about the same period, being 
synchronic with king Jehu of Israel (about 820 b. c), and bears no 
peculiar traces of archaism. The archaic human-headed bull and 
lion of Arban, published by Layard, 133 must therefore be placed by 
several centuries before the obelisk, and may perhaps belong to the 
time of the first contact of Mesopotamia and Egypt under the con- 
quering kings of the XVTIth and XVHTth dynasties. 

" Their outline and treatment," says Layard, " are bold and angular, with an archaic feel- 
ing conveying the impression of great antiquity. They bear the same relation to the more 
delicately finished and highly ornamented sculptures of Nimroud as the earliest specimens 
of Greek art do to the exquisite monuments of Phidias and Praxiteles. The human 
features are, unfortunately, much injured, but such parts as remain are sufficient to show 
that the countenance had a peculiar character, differing from the Assyrian type. The nose 
was flat and large, and the lips thick and overhanging, like those of a negro." 

To judge by the drawing of Dr. Layard, knowing the correctness 
of his designs, we must observe that the head of the Arban bull has 
as little of nigritian characters as the head of the colossal sphinx 134 
before the second Pyramid ; which had formerly likewise often been 
compared to a Negro, exclusively on account of the fulness of the 
lips, and the defacement of its nose by Arab iconoclasts. 135 The face, 
however, on both these monuments, has no particular projection of 

132 De Rouge', Notice, p. 16: — established also by Birch, "On two Egyptian cartouches 
found at Nimroud," 1848, pp. 153-60 ; abundantly figured in Layard's folio Monuments of 
Nineveh, 1849. 

133 Nineveh and Babylon, p. 276 & f. 

134 [Since the studies of Lenormant (Musee des Antiquites E~gyptiennes, p. 44), and of 
Letronne (Recueil des Inscriptions Grecques el Latines, II, 1848, pp. 460-86), the epoch here- 
tofore attributed to the Great Sphinx, viz : to Amosis (Aahmes) of XVIIth dynasty, has also 
been carried to the more ancient period of the Old Empire, through the successive explora- 
tions of Lepsius (Briefe, 1852, pp. 42-5), Brugsch (Reiseberichte, 1855, pp. 10-34), and 
more than all by Mariette, who re-uncovered this rock-colossus in 1853. The enigma of 
the " Sphinx," through the latter's researches, has vanished likewise ! It is but "Horus of 
the horizon," i. e. the setting sun. (De Saulct, " Fouilles du Serapeum de Memphis," Le 
Conslitulionel, Paris, 9 Dec. 1854: — Maury, Decouvertes en Sgyple, p. 1074) — G. R. G.] 

135 [Makreezee narrates how the nose of the Sphinx was chiselled away by a fanatical 
muslim saint, about 1378: — Cf. Fialin de Persigny, then "de'tenu a la maison de saute" 
de Doulens," [De la Destination et de T Utilite" permanente des Pyramides de l'E~gypte et de la 
Nubie conlre les Irruptions Sablonneuses du Disert, Paris, 8vo. 1845). — G. R. G.] 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 143 

the jaws, and the facial angle is open. The fulness of the lips pecu- 
liar to the Egyptian, or negroid type, reminds the man of science only 
of Egypt, not of negroes ; who, in spite of Count de Gobineau's inge- 
nious hypotheses, 136 could not have been the ancestors of the Arian 
monarchs of Mesopotamia. Though all the human-headed hulls of 
Assyria are royal portraits, just as sphinxes of Egypt were likenesses 
of the Pharaohs, 137 still, we are scarcely authorized to draw any con- 
clusion about an Egyptian origin of Assyrian art from the negroid 
(perhaps Arab-Cushite) cast of features of the Arban king: for, in all 
other respects, the colossus exhibits the marked characteristics of 
Assyrian art ; for instance, in the elaborate arrangement of the curls 
and beard, the architectural peculiarity of the five feet of the bull, 
instead of four, together with the exaggeration of the muscles. 
Assyrian art, in its earliest known remains, appears entirely national 
and independent of Egypt ; and it maintains its peculiar type through 
the vicissitudes of several centuries down to the destruction of the 
empire. "We do not mean to say that Egypt exerted no influence 
whatever on Assyria; on the contrary, there are some bronze 
cups and ivory ornaments and statuettes, in the British Museum, 
evidently imitated from Egyptian models; still, the Egyptian ex- 
erted but a temporary influence on the decorative element of the 
Assyrian style, without modifying the art of Assyria, which can best 
be designated by the epithet of "princely." The king, according to 
the reliefs, sums up the whole national life of Nineveh. Wherever 
we look, we meet exclusively with his representations, surrounded 
here with his court, there with his army, receiving tribute and con- 
cluding treaties, leading his troops and fighting battles, besieging 
fortresses and punishing the prisoners, hunting the wild bull and the 
lion of the desert, feasting in his royal halls and drinking wine from 
costly cups. Even the pantheon of Assyria is mostly known by the 
worship, oblations, and sacrifices of the king. The scenes of domes- 
tic life, and of the sports and occupations of the people, which, in 
Egyptian reliefs, occupy nearly as much place as the representations 
connected with royalty, are altogether wanting at Nineveh. There 
are a few slabs that represent domestic occupations — a servant curry- 
combing a horse, a cook superintending the boilers, and the butchers 

136 De Gobineau, in his Inegalite des races humaines, attributes the artistic faculties of any 
race to an admixture of Negro or Mongol blood, although he acknowledges that pure Negroes 
are unartistic. 

137 The union of a human head to a lion in Egypt, and to a bull in Assyria, implies an 
apotheosis : since the lion and the bull were the symbols of Gods, the terrestrial images of 
celestial beings. 



144 THE NATIONS OF THE 

disjointing a calf; 138 but all this is done before tbe tent of tbe king: 
it is tbe royal stable and tbe royal kitchen which we see before us, — in 
fact, " court-life below stairs." The rich Asiatic costume of the 
Assyrians, wide and flowing, decorated with embroidery, fringes and 
tassels, contrasts most strikingly with the prevalent nakedness of 
Egyptian and Greek art. We are always reminded of the pomp, splen- 
dor and etiquette of eastern courts. The proportions of the human 
body are somewhat short and heavy, less animated in their action, but 
more correctly modelled than in Egyptian reliefs. Nothing but an 
occasional want of correctness about the shoulders and the eyes, 
which, in the bas-reliefs, are drawn in the front-view, reminds us of the 
infancy of art or of a traditionary hieratic style. The anatomical 
knowledge, however, with which the muscles are sculptured, even 
where the execution is rather coarse, surpasses the art of Egypt in 
the time of the XVIIth dynasty. The composition is generally 
clear, the space conveniently and symmetrically filled with figures, 
and the relief, to a certain degree, has ceased to be a mere architec- 
tural decoration : on the palace of Essarhaddon, it has even become 
a real tableau. For all this, we cannot appreciate the merit of the 
sculptures, if we pass our judgment upon them independently of the 
place for which they were originally destined. Accordingly, the 
peculiarly Assyrian exaggeration in representing the muscles of the 
body has often been criticized ; 139 since it escaped the attention of our 
modern art-critics, that this fault is only apparent, not real, being 
produced exclusively by the different way in which the bas-reliefs 
were lit in antiquity and modern times. In the hot climate and 
under the glaring sun of Mesopotamia, the palaces were built prin- 
cipally with the view to afford coolness and shade ; and therefore all 
the royal halls were long, high and narrow, in order to exclude the 
rays of the sun. They could, in consequence, but very imperfectly 
have been lighted from above, through apertures in the colonnade 
supporting the beams of the roof. A cool chiaroscuro reigned in all 
the apartments ; and unless the reliefs on the wall were intended 
altogether to be lost to beholders, it was indispensable to have the 
principal lines deeply cut into the alabaster, in order to produce a 
sufficiently-intense shadow for making the composition and its details 
apparent. The Assyrian sculptors, with true artistical feeling, cal- 
culated upon the effect their works were" to make in the king's 
palaces ; but could not dream that their compositions were to be 

188 Bonomi, Nineveh and Us Palaces, p. 228-29 ; an octavo which admirably popularizes tho 
costly folios of Botta and Flandin's Ninive. 
139 Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 315. 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 



145 



exposed, 28 centuries later, to the close inspection of the critics of our 
day in well-lighted museums. 

When we claim a peculiar national type for Assyrian art, alto- 
gether independent of Egyptian, we do not mean to deny accidental 
Egyptian influence, which, however, could not transform Assyrian 
sculpture into a branch of Nilotic art. The beautiful embossed 
bronze bowls, ivory bas-reliefs and statuettes found at Mneveh, are 
certainly imitations of Egyptian models ; but we encounter similar 
artistical fashions at Rome in the time of Hadrian. They remained 
altogether on the surface, and did not affect the national style. Still, 
we do find some artistic "motives," even on the best reliefs of Nim- 
rood and Khorsabad, which show on the one hand, that the Assyrian 
sculptors were acquainted with some Egyptian monuments of art ; 
and on the other, that this acquaintance ever continued to be super- 
ficial. Thus, for instance, we often meet on Pharaonic battle-scenes, 
with the vulture, holding a sword in its claws, soaring above tbe king, 
as a symbol of victory. The Mnevite artists copied this representa- 
tion, but, unacquainted with its hieratic symbolical meaning, sculp- 
tured the vulture simply as the hideous bird of prey, feeding upon the 
corpses on the battle-field, and carrying the limbs into its eyrie. In 
a similar way, the winged solar disc, the symbol of the heavenly sun, 
was transformed in Assyria into the guardian-angel of the king him- 
self, and transferred at a later age to Persia as tbe Feruer. 

The following representation of 
an Assyrian [24] gives us a fair Fl £- 24 - 

idea of the Arian type of' the ISfine- 
vite aristocracy. It is the head 
of a statue of the God Nebo, in the 
British Museum, bearing across its 
breast an inscription, stating that 
the statue was executed by a sculp- 
tor of Calah, and dedicated by him 
to his lord Phalukha, (Belochus, 
Pul,) king of Assyria, and to his 
lady Sammuramit (Semiramis) queen 
of the palace (about 750 b. a). 

The same general cast of features 
is clearly discernible in an inedited 
portrait of Essareadbon [25] (about 
660 b. c.) taken from the great tri- 
umphal tableau at Kouyundjik, Nebo- 
now in the British Museum. The 

Ninevite artists, — who, about the time of this king, introduced a 
10 




146 



THE NATIONS OF THE 



new feature into relievos by trying to combine landscape and natural 

objects with tbe great bistorical 
compositions, — were perfectly 
aware of tbe differences in tbe 
national types also. Tbe two pri- 
soners at tbe feet of king Assar- 
akbal m, are evidently not Assy- 
rians, one of tbem [26] being a 
Sbemite, tbe otber [27] an inha- 
bitant of tbe table-lands of Arme- 
nia, if not a Kurd. Sir Henry 
Rawlinson deems tbem Susians. 
Still nobler than Essarhaddon 
is tbe Sardanapalus [28] (635 b. 
c.) of tbe British Museum, a truly 
magnificent prince, tbe father of 
tbe king under whom Mneveh 
was destroyed, and who, in the 
Greek histories, is mentioned 
under the same name. His 
Essarhaddon. monuments, lately discovered, 




Fig. 26. 



Fig. 27. 




Shemite Prisoner, (Inedited). 




Kurdish Prisoner, {Inedited). 



and brought to England by Mr. Rassam, are so exquisitely modelled, 
and executed with such a highly-developed sense of beauty, 
that we must rank them among the best relics of ancient art. The 
peculiar hair-dress of the king seems to have served as a model to 
the Lycian sculptor of the Harpy monument of Xanthus, in the 
Br. M. ; and it is remarkable that tbe female bead [29] of an archaic 
coin of Velia, in Italy, shows the same arrangement of tbe hair. Velia 
was a colony from Phocsea, in Ionia, whose high-minded citizens 
preferred abandoning their country, rather than to live under the 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 147 

sway of the conqueror Croesus. They carried the traditions of 

Fig. 28. Fig. 29. 





Silver Coin from Velia, {Pulszky coll.) 

Asiatic art into Italy, at a time 
when Hellas could not yet 
boast of eminence in sculpture. 
But although the hair-dress 
of the Velian female closely 
resembles and may be traced 
Sardanapams. back to Assyrian models, which 

are about two centuries older, 
still the cast of the features is not the same. It is, as might be ex- 
pected, thoroughly Greek. "Whilst, as a remarkable instance of the 
constancy of national types, the likeness between the modern Chal- 
deans (JSTestorians) and the old Assyrians is unmistakable. To illus- 
trate this properly, we give, side by side, sketches of a Chaldean mer- 
chant of Mosul, and a head from one of the Nineveh sculptures. 140 



Fig. 30. 



Fig. 31. 





Modern Chaldee. Ancient Assyrian. 

Babylon, of whose art but few remains have as yet been dis- 



140 Illustrated London News, May 24, 1856. 



148 



THE NATIONS OF THE 



covered, — mostly cylindrical seals of lapis-lazuli and haematite, and 
some terra-cottas — was less artistical than Nineveh. Its statuary was 
a branch of the Assyrian, not differing in style, hut only in perfec- 
tion. All the Babylonian monuments, without exception, are evi- 
dences of the more Shemitic character of the country ; whither art 
has been imported from Nineveh, without ever becoming thoroughly 
understood. 

A nobler spirit prevailed in Arian Persia. The royal palaces and 

tombs of the Achsemenian 
Fig. 32. kings yield numerous speci- 

mens of Persian art, mostly 
belonging to the great time 
of Persia under Darius Hys- 
taspes and his son Xerxes. 
Nevertheless, one monument, 
which shows the origin of 
art under the Achsemenidse, 
has likewise escaped the ra- 
vages of time, and is proba- 
bly the earliest of all the 
Persian reliefs. "We speak of 
the rock-sculpture at Mur- 
ghab, close to Persepolis, re- 
presenting a man with four 
wings, clad in the long As- 
syrian robe without folds, and 
bearing on his head the Egyp- 
tian crown called "Atf," which 
is the peculiar distinction of the 
God Ohnum. The cuneiform 
inscription, above the sculp- 
ture, says, with grandeur and 
simplicity: "I am Cyrus, the 
king; the Achsemenian."[S2] 
This monument was evi- 
dently, then, erected in honour of Cyrus, but it cannot have been 
sculptured in the life-time of the conqueror, inasmuch as his wings 
(which are the Assyrian attributes of Godhead), and the crown of 
Chnum (which is the Egyptian symbol of divine power), clearly indi- 
cate an apotheosis. The peculiarity of the costume of Cyrus, which 
is purely Assyrian, without folds, forbids us to place the sculpture 
in the time of Darius or his descendants ; whose monuments, with- 




141 Vaux, Nineveh and Persepolis, 4th ed., London, 1855 ; Plate, pp 392-3. 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 



149 



out exception, are characterized by the Persian folds of the gar- 
ment. 

Thus, then, the relief of Murghab must be the work of Cam- 
btses, who, according to Diodorus Siculus, 142 employed Egyptian 
artists, and was probably the first to introduce art into Persia. Ac- 
cording to the rock-sculpture, bowever, be did not confine himself 
to Egyptians, but transplanted sculptors likewise from Babylonia and 
Assyria to Pasargadss, and dedicated their first work to the lasting 
memory of his illustrious father (about 580 b. c). Thus, we may 
safely state that Persian art is a daughter of the Assyrian, a little 
modified by Egyptian influences, but soon emancipating itself from 
its early traditions by a purely national development, characterized 
by the very high elegance of the drapery '. Bonomi 143 takes the 
Persian style, wrongly, for a deterioration of Assyrian art; but his 
mistake is easily explained, since he formed his judgment upon some 
fragments of a later period, which are now in the British Museum, 
and upon the drawings of Ker Porter and Gore Ouseley. The Perse 
of Flandin, and the Armenie of Texier, seem to have escaped bis 
attention. They are the only ones, notwithstanding, wbicb do full 
justice to the refined taste and the neat execution of the sculptures 
of Persepolis. In comparison with the Assyrian Monuments of 
Sargon and Essarhaddon, they take the same place, as, in Egypt, 
does the elegant style of Psammeticus contrasted with the grandeur 
of the statues of the Amenophs and Thutmoses. We must, however, 
acknowledge that they are inferior to the reliefs of Sardanapalus. 
Although the head of Cyrus (as shown by the more accurate copy of 
Texier 144 [33] here presented,) 
at Murghab, is somewhat 
damaged about the nose, it 
is sufficiently characteristic 
to show its pure Arian type. 
The portrait of Xerxes, 145 [34] 
is a fine specimen of the so- 
termed Greek profile, which 
we ought to call pure Arian. 
The Achssmenidan sculptors 
moreover, were very well ac- 
quainted with the peculiar 
Cyrus. character of the different na- 




Fig. 34 




Xerxes. 



142 Libra 1, capite 46. 

1*3 Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 315. 

144 L' Armenie, la Perse, el la Mesopotamie, II., pi. 84 — "Bas-relief a Mourgab, Cyrus." 

145 Coste and Flandin, Perse Ancienne, pi. 154; but compare the more beautiful copy in 
Texier's Armenie. 



150 



THE NATIONS OF THE 



tional types of the inhabitants of the Persian empire ; as we see 
plainly on the reliefs of the tomb of king Darius Hystaspes, which 
he had excavated in the mountain Rachmend, near Persepolis. The 
king is represented here in royal attire before the fire-altar, over 
which hovers his guardian angel, in the form of a human half-figure 
rising from a winged disc. This group, grand in its simplicity, is 
placed on a beautifully decorated platform, supported by two rows 
of Caryatides, sixteen in each row, representing the four different 
nationalities subject to this king, — besides the ruling Persians, who 
occupy a more distinguished position, flanking the composition on 
both sides, and typified by three spearsmen of the royal guard, and 
by three courtiers who raise their hands in adoration. 

This relief of the sepulchre of Darius in Persia, is one of the most 
valuable documents of ethnology, second in importance only to king 
Menephthah's (Seti I.) celebrated tomb at Thebes recording four 
types of man. 146 "We see here first the sculpture of a Chaldean, stand- 



Fig. 35. "> 




Ltdian. 



Scythian. 



NEGRO. 



Chaldee. 



ing for Assyria and Babylonia ; it is so striking that it cannot be mis- 
taken. Next to the Chaldean stands the negro for the Egypto- 
^Ethiopian empire added by Cambyses to the Persian. It was on the 
Nile that Persia became first acquainted with negroes, and therefore 
chose them for the representatives of Africa ; though the empire of 
the Achsemenidas, ceasing in Nubia and the western Oases, never 
extended over Negro-land, or the Soodan proper. The third sup- 
porter of the platform can be none else than the representative of 
the Scythian empire of Astyages. His peculiarly-round skull, which 
still characterizes the pure Turkish and Magyar blood, designates 
him as belonging to a Turanian race. The last figure in the group 
wears the Phrygian cap, and personifies the Lydian empire of 
Crcesus, of which Phrygia, on account of its rich gold-mines, was 
the most important province. 

Thus, in the rock-hewn tomb of Darius, (about 490 B. c.) at a time 

i« Types of Mankind, p. 85, fig. 1 ; and pp. 247-9. 

i« Texieb, L'Armenie el la Perse, II., pi. 126, "Persepolis — Tombeau dans le roc." 



CUNEIFORM WRITING. 151 

when Greek art was still archaic, Persian sculpture preserved 
five characteristic types of mankind in an admirable work of art, 
as evidences of the constancy of the peculiar cast of features of 
human races. The monumental negro resembles the negro of to-day ; 
the Arian features of king Darius and his guards are identical with 
those we meet still in Persia and all over Europe ; the Turanian (or 
Scythian) bears a family resemblance to many Turks and Hunga- 
rians ; the identity of the Assyrian and modern Chaldean physiog- 
nomy has been mentioned and proved above ; and the Phrygian 
represents the mixed population of Asia Minor, a modification of the 
Arian type by the infusion of foreign blood — Iranian, Scythic, and 
Shemitish interminglings. 

Persian art, as a branch and daughter of the Assyrian, never rose 
to a higher development than under Darius and Xerxes. The dis- 
sensions and the profligacy of the royal house checked the progress 
of art, which remained stationary until Alexander the Macedonian 
destroyed the independence of the empire, and tried to hellenize the 
subdued Persians. His endeavors, continued by the first Seleucidse 
of Syria, were not devoid of results ; because, even when Persia 
recovered its independence and re-appeared in history as the Par- 
thian empire, all its coins bear Greek inscriptions and imitations of 
Grecian types. "We ought not to forget, notwithstanding, that the 
Parthians were probably not Persians proper, but an unartistical Tu- 
ranian tribe, held in subjection by the earlier Persians under their 
Achsemenian kings, which, in its turn, revolting from the yoke, ruled 
the Persians for above four centuries. 

Some specimens of a peculiar style of art have been lately disco- 
vered within the boundaries of the old Persian empire, viz : at Pte- 
riurn and ISTymphse. They were published by Texier ; 148 and it has 
been suggested that they might be Median. The bas-reliefs certainly 
present nothing to suggest any relation to the art of that race which 
originated the cuneiform writing ; nor is a perceptible affinity con- 
spicuous between them and the Egyptian style. Nevertheless, the 
artists who chiselled them knew of the productions of Greek genius. 
The breath of Hellenism has passed over them, as we perceive from 
the following male [36] and female [37] heads. They are, therefore, 
by many centuries posterior to the great Median empire. Still, it 
would be presumptuous to attribute them to any determinate nation- 
ality, since none of the highlands flanking Asia Minor, inhabited then 
by aboriginal tribes, were ever completely hellenized; although they 
were powerfully affected by the genius of Hellas, whose progress 

148 Asie Mineure, PI. 61, 78,—" Bas-relief taille' dans le roc. L'Offrande" — et seq. 



152 NATIONS OF THE CUNEIFORM WRITING. 



Fig. 36. 



Fig. 37. 



never was stopped by "barbarians," but only by the equally pow- 
erful and expanding Sbemitic and 
Arian civilization. The national 
spirit of the Arians in Persia revived 
after five centuries of Greek and heL 
fem'zed-Parthian rule. Ardeschir, 
tbe son of Babek, and grandson to 
Sassan, rose up in rebellion against 
tbe Parthian Arsacides, and broke 
down their supremacy in a long 
protracted war about the beginning 
of the third century of our era (a. d. 
214-226 : obiit, 240). With his tri- 
umph, Persian art revived once 




Goddess from 
Pterium. 



more ; and although it inherited no 



Fig. 38. 



connection with the traditions of 
Achsemenian art, it was again characterized by the peculiar rich- 
ness of the flowing drapery. Sassanide art is at any rate equal, if not 
superior, to the contemporary style of Rome ; indeed, the head of Ar- 
deschir himself, [38] from a rock- 
sculpture at Persepolis, is a -most 
creditable work of art, scarcely 
surpassed by any Roman relief of 
the same period. This "Indian 
summer" of ancient Persian art 
lasted but for a short time ; it de- 
generated under the later kings, 
and was entirely destroyed by the 
Mohammedan conquest, in the se- 
venth century. The Kur'an was 
introduced by fire and sword, and 
became soon the undisputed law 
of the Persian race. Accordingly, 
we might expect the cessation of 
artistical life. But here we meet with a most striking evidence in 
favor of our assertion that art is the result of a peculiar innate ten- 
dency of some races, which cannot be crushed out by civil and reli- 
gious prohibitions. As soon as the Persians recovered their politi- 
cal independence, and fell off from the Arab, Khalifate of Bagdad, 
they continued to draw and even to carve human forms, though they 
never ceased to profess strict adherence to the Kur'an. Their style 




Ardeschir. 149 



119 Texier, Armenie, 1852, ii., PI. 148. 



THE ETRUSCANS AND THEIR ART. 153 

of art changed now for the third time ; but neither the instinct for 
art, nor its habitual practice, has ever yet been destroyed among the 
true Iranian race of Persia. 



Y. — THE ETRUSCANS AND THEIR ART. 

The Etruscans were a mongrel race, the result of the amalgama- 
tion of different tribes, partly Asiatic, partly European, both Italian 
and Greek. Their language was mixed, though it is still greatly 
disputed how far the Greek elements pervaded the aboriginal forms 
of speech. As to the origin of the Etruscans : the most probable 
opinion is, that Lydians from the ancient Torrhebis in Asia emi- 
grated to Italy and became the rulers of the then little-civilized abo- 
rigines, who were either Pelasgic TJnibrians, or a Celtic Alpine tribe, 
which had- previously and gradually migrated southwards. They - 
held the country from the Po to the Tiber, and extended even to (Jf 
southern Italy. Greek immigrants, principally ^Eolians from Corinth, 
settled among them at a somewhat later period, and the mixture of 
these nationalities produced the historical Etruscans. In regard to 
the details, the standard authors on Etruria differ in their opinions. 
Raoul-Pochette takes them for Pelasgi, modified by Lydians; 
whereas 15Tiebu.hr denies the Lydian immigration related by Herodo- 
tus ; the Tyrrhenians being with him foreign conquering invaders, 
but not Lydians. Still, the monuments of Etruria bear evidence 
both to the early connection between Etruria and Lower Asia, and 
to the existence of an unartistic aboriginal population of Umbri, 
Siculi, &c. 

This view is supported by a great orientalist, Lanci, 150 who distin- 
guishes three periods of Etruscan literature : — 1st. When the Phoe- 
nico-Lydian elements arrived in Italy ; 2d., when the Greeks began 
to mix with it, after the advent of Demaratus ; and 3d., when Gre- 
cian mythology, letters, and tongue, preponderated. Similar is that 
of Lenormant, 151 in perceiving three phases of civilization in Etruria 
— " une phase asiatique, une phase corinthienne, une phase athe- 
nienne." If, notwithstanding, we remember how, as late as 1848, the 
whole stock of words recovered from inscriptions amounted to but 
thirty-three ; 152 and that, — besides a few names of deities, like ^ESAR, 
"God" (Osiris ?),— tl^e formula RLL AVTL "vixit annos," CLAN" 

loo Parere di Michaelangelo Lanci inlorno all' Iscrizione Elrusca delta statua Todina del 
museo Valicano, Roma, Aprile, 1837. 

151 " Fragment sur l'etude des vases peintes antiques, Revue Archeol., May, 1844, p. 87. 

152 Denis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, London, 1848, pp. xlii-v, that is to say, such 
words as cannot be explained from Greek and Latin roots. 



-'• 



154 THE ETRUSCANS 

"filius," and SEC "filia," comprised all now known in reality of the 
lost speech of the Tyrrheni ; we may well exclaim with the prophet, 
" it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not." 

"Whatever be the pedigree of the Etruscans, they were a hardy and 
enterprising nation, full of energy and skill, ready to receive improve- 
ments from foreign populations, even if, in their institutions, they 
were rather conservative. History shows them as a free, aristocratic, 
and manufacturing nation, characterized by a marked practical ten- 
dency, by little idealism and feeling for beauty, but much ingenuity 
in applying art to household purposes and to the comfort of private 
life. They were, in fact, the English of antiquity, — but they had not 
the good luck of the British islanders to be surrounded by the sea, 
and thus to have enjoyed the possibility of maintaining and develop- 
ing their independence without foreign intervention. Eew dangers 
threatened the Etruscans from the north : they protected themselves 
sufficiently against the incursions of savage Gauls, by fortifying their 
towns, the cyclopean walls of which are still the wonder of the tra- 
veller. It was principally towards the south that they had to contend 
with powerful foes. The maritime states of Cumse, Corinth, Syra- 
cuse, and Carthage, interfered with the extension of Etruscan naval 
enterprise, and prevented its full development on the Adriatic and 
on the Mediterranean. Still, the Etruscans were strong enough to 
defend their own coast, and to exclude the establishment of indepen- 
dent Greek and Punic settlements on the Tuscan territory. A more 
important and finally fatal enemy arose in their immediate vicinity, 
■ — Rome, with her population of hardy agriculturists, and a senate 
bent upon conquest and annexation. Accordingly, wars recurred 
from time to time, from the foundation of the city until 120 b. c, 
when the Tyrrhenian country was finally annexed to Rome. Never- 
theless, the city on the Tiber had long previously felt the influence 
of the Etruscans in her institutions, laws, and religion. Etruria gave 
kings and senators to Rome. Her sacerdotal rites, her works of 
public utility, the dignified costume of official splendor, and appa- 
rently even that universal popular garb, the toga, were all of Etrus- 
can origin. 

There are principally three features in the history of Etruria, which 
had a peculiar influence on its art. Being of mixed origin themselves, 
the Tuscans displayed a greater receptivity of exotic influences, than 
more homogeneous nations, who feel always' a kind of repulsion 
against foreigners. Being exposed to the attacks of the Gauls, they 
had to live in towns ; and therefore commerce and manufacturing 
industry were of greater importance among them than agriculture. 
Lastly, their history presents no epoch of great national triumphs, ele- 



AND THEIR ART. 155 

vating the patriotism of the people, and inspiring the poet and artist. 
Art being everywhere the mirror of national life, we find these pecu- 
liar features of the Tuscan history expressed in the paintings and 
sculptures of Etruria. They lack originality. The artists borrowed 
their forms of art from all the nations with whom their country came 
into contact. Idealism and a higher sense of beauty remained foreign 
to them ; in consequence, they never reached the highest eminence 
of art. Under their hands, it became principally ornamental and 
decorative, mechanical; and, above all, practical and comfortable 
among these obesos et pingues Etruscos. Whilst temples and their 
propylee are the principal objects of Greek architecture, the walls of 
the town, the bridge, the canal, the sewer, and the highway, charac- 
terize Tuscan art. 

This Etruscan want of originality and peculiar receptivity of foreign 
influences extends not only to the forms, but even to the subjects of 
their paintings and sculpture. They rarely occupy themselves with 
their own myths and superstitions, but deal principally with Greek 
mj'thology as developed by the great Epics and even Tragic poetry 
of Greece. 

All the artistical forms of Etruria were imported from abroad. 
Micali, in his Monumenti Antichi, and Monumenti Inediti, has pub- 
lished so many and such various ancient relics of Etruscan workman- 
ship, that a three-fold foreign influence on Tuscan art can no longer 
be doubted, viz : Egyptian, Asiatic and Greek. Besides these, we 
find that the bulk of the nation must have clung to a peculiar kind 
of barbarous and ugly idols, intentionally distorted like the pateeci of 
the Phoenicians. These deformed caricatures continued to be fabri- 
cated in Etruria to a rather late period : 153 they are an evidence of the 
fact that there was an unartistical element in the Tuscan nation, 
never polished by the Lydian and Greek immigration. The easy 
introduction of foreign forms of art shows likewise that there existed 
no higher national style in Etruria previous to the Tyrrhenian 
influences. 

The most peculiar of all the foreign forms of art among the Tus- 
cans is the Scarabseus, that is to say, the beetle-shape of their sculp- 
tured gems. They must have borrowed it direct from Egypt without 
any Greek inter-medium, since the scarab-form of gems is exceedingly 
rare in Greece, and not of so early a period as the Etruscan scarabsei. 
In Egypt this form was always national, being the most common 
symbol of the creative power of godhead. The Egyptian, beholding 

153 Gerhard, Sformale immagini in Bronzo, Bullelino dell' Institute, 1830, p. 11 ; and Etru- 
rischc Spiegelzeichnurgen, Chap. 1. 



156 THE ETRUSCANS 

the beetle of the Nile with its hind legs rolling a ball of mud, which 
contained the eggs of the insect, from the river to the desert, saw in 
the scarabaaus the symbol of the Creator, shaping the ball of the 
earth out of wet clay, and planting in it the seeds of all life. 154 The 
Egyptian artist often represented this symbol of godhead ; and when 
he had to carve a seal, (the sign of authenticity by which kings and 
citizens ratify their pledged word and engagements,) he cut it on 
stone, which he carved into the shape of a beetle, as if thus to place 
the seal under the protection and upon the symbol of godhead, in 
order to deter people both from forgery and from falsehood. Placed 
over the stomach of a mummy, according to rules specially enjoined 
in the "funereal ritual," it was deemed a never-failing talisman to 
shield the "soul" of its wearer against the terrific genii of Anienthi. 
The Egyptian symbol, however, possessed no analogous religious 
meaning for the Etruscans when they adopted the form of the 
scarabfeus : and even after they had abandoned it, they still retained 
the Egyptian cartouche, which encircles nearly all the works of Etrus- 
can glyptic. 

Besides the scarabsei, we find in Etruria several other Egyptian 
reminiscences, — head-dresses similar to the Pharaonic fashion, 155 and 
even idols of glazed earthenware, entirely of Egyptian shape ; for 
instance the representation of Khons, the Egyptian Hercules ; 156 of 
Onoueis, the Egyptian Mars ; or of sistrums and cats, 157 all of them 
most strikingly Egyptian in their style. 

A certain class of black earthenware vases decorated with stamped 
representations in relief, many of the earliest painted vases, some 
gems mostly of green jasper, and the marble statue of Polledrara 
now in the British Museum, are by style and costume so closely con- 
nected with the monuments of Assyria, that it is now difficult to 
doubt of a connection between Etruria and inner Asia. The disbe- 
lievers in the Lydian immigration explain the Oriental types of 
Etruria by intercourse with Phoenician merchants, and by the im- 
portation of Babylonian tapestry, — -celebrated all over the ancient 
world, — which might have familiarized the Etruscans with the 
Assyrian style and type of art. But the use of the arch in Tuscan 
architecture finally disposes of this explanation, since we learned that 
the arch was known to the Assyrians, but not to the early Greeks. 
It was introduced into the states of Hellas at a rather late period, about 

154 Hoeapollo Nilous, Hieroglyphica, transl. Cory, London, 1840; — "How an only- 
begotten," | X, pp. 19-22. 

155 Monumenti dell' Institute-, vol. 1, pi. XLI. fig. 11-12. 

156 Micalt, Monumenti Antiehi, tav. 45-46. 
15 ' Idem, Monum. Inedili, tav. I, II, XVII, L. 



AND THEIR ART. 157 

the times of Phidias. Had this architectural form heen brought to 
Etruria by the Phoenicians, it would have reached Greece at the same 
time as Italy, or earlier; whereas the contrary is the case. The 
earliest architectural arch we know is in Egypt, and belongs to the 
reign of Eamesses the Great. 158 Monsieur Place and Dr. Layard have 
discovered brick arches in the palaces of Sargon and his successors 
in Assyria, and on the Ninevite reliefs we often see arched gates with 
regular key-stones. Etruria was the next in time to make use of the 
arch. The Lydians, neighbors of Assyria, must have been acquainted 
with arched buildings, and in their new home made a most extensive 
use of this architectural feature for gates, and for sewers ; of which 
the celebrated Qloaca Maxima of Rome, built by the Tarquinii, is the 
most important still-extant example. It is, therefore, rather amusing 
to perceive that Seneca, 159 having before his eyes this monument of his 
country's early greatness, thoughtlessly alleges that Democritus, the 
contemporary of Phidias, invented the principle of the arch and of the 
key-stone. Indeed, the Romans were no great critics : Seneca ex- 
tracted the above-mentioned fact(!)from the Greek author Posidonius, 
and trusted his Grecian authority more than his own knowledge. 
Democritus was probably the man who introduced the arch from 
Italy into Greece, and got the credit of its invention among his vain 
fellow-citizens. 

Of all the foreign influences on Etruscan art, the Greek was the 
most powerful. It soon superseded both the Egyptian and the 
Oriental types. But here we ought not to forget that many of the 
Italic colonies of Grsecia Magna came from Asia, not from European 
Greece, and that the art of Ionia proper and of the neighboring 
countries exercised at least an equal influence on the Italiots with 
that of Greece proper. Our histories of art, hitherto, have not paid 
sufficient attention to the development of art among the Asiatic 
Greeks ; although the monuments discovered and to a certain extent 
published by Sir Charles Fellowes, Texier, Elandin and others, yield 
ample material for a comprehensive work on the subject, which 
might probably show that not only the poetry, history or philosophy, 
of the Greeks, but even their art, had its cradle in Asia Minor. At any 
rate, the numerous colonies of Miletus, Phocfea, Heraclia, Cyme,and 
other states of Ionia and ^Eolis, carried the principles of Greek art 
further than Greece proper. 

As to the Greek influence on Etruria, we have to distinguish two 
if not three periods : the early Asiatic Ionian, which introduced the 

ls8 Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, v. 1, p. 18, & II, p. 300: — crude brick 
arches are, however, certainly as old as Thotmes III. 
153 Epistol. 90. 



158 



THE ETRUSCANS AND THEIR ART. 



rigid archaic style of the Tuscan bronze-figures ; 16 ° the later Doric 
style, carried to Tarquinii from Corinth by Demaratus, which cha- 
racterizes the potteries of Italy ; and perhaps a still later Attic style, 
chaste and dignified, such as we admire on the best Etruscan vases. 
Inasmuch, however, as all the names of the artists inscribed on the 
vases, the alphabet of the inscriptions, and the style of the drawing, 
are exclusively Grecian, there are many arch^ologists who do not 
attribute them to Etruria, but believe they may have either been 
imported from Greece, or manufactured in Etruria by guilds of Greek 
artists who maintained their nationality in the midst of the Tuscans. 
The national type of Tuscan physiognomies is rather ugly : entirely 
different from the Egyptian, Shemitic, Assyrian or Greek cast. It 
is characterized by a low forehead, high cheek-bones, and a coarse 
and prominent chin. The following wood-cut [38] shows two archaic 
heads from an embossed silver-relief found in Perugia, 161 now in the 
British Museum. The next figure is a fragment of a statue, [89] sculp- 



Fig. 38. 



Fig. 39. 





Etruscan Heads. 



Vulcian Head. 



tured out of a porous volcanic stone called Nenfro. It was found at 
Vulci, and is remarkable for the Egyptian head-dress and Etruscan 
features. 162 The head of Eos, or Aurora, [40] from a celebrated bronze 
now in the British Museum, found at Falterona in the province of 
Casentino, 163 gives a poor idea of the Tuscan feeling for beauty ; still, 
the liveliness of the movement and the excellent execution of the 
statuette cannot but excite our admiration. Another head [41] of a 
bronze figure in the British Museum strikingly exhibits the Etruscan 



160 The Etruscan bronzes closely resemble the archaic Greek figures : still, the peculiar 
Etruscan physiognomy, and the national fashion of shaving the beard, distinguish them 
from the early Greek monuments. 

161 Milmngen, Ancient Inedited Monuments, HE, pi. 

162 Monumenti dell' Institute-, I, pi. XLI ; and Lenoir, Tombeaux Urusgues, Annali dell' Insti- 
tute-, 1832, page 270. 

163 See also Mioali, Mon. Inediti, pp. 86-98, tavola XIII, 1 and 2. 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 159 

type of features. These four specimens suffice to show the peculi- 

Fig. 40. Fig. 41. 




Eos. 




Etkuscan. 



arity of, and the difference between, the art of Etruria and that of 
the surrounding nations. It occupies a higher rank than the art of 
Phoenicia, but it is inferior to the Greek, since it remained depend- 
ent upon foreign forms, and was unable to acclimatize itself 
thoroughly in upper Italy. 



VI. — THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 

It was the Greeks, who, among the Japetide nations, occupied the 
most important place in the histoiy of mankind. Though compara- 
tively few in number, they have, during the short time of their 
national independence, done more for the ennoblement of the human 
race, than any other people on earth. It was among the Greeks 
that the genius of freedom, for the first time in history, expanded 
its wings in highly civilized states, even under the most complicated 
relations of aristocracy and democracy, of unity, suzerainty and 
federalism. Under the rule of liberty, the Greek mind dived boldly 
into the sea of knowledge, and along with the treasures of science 
secured that idea of plastical beauty and measure, which pervades 
all the Hellenic life so thoroughly that even virtue was known amongst 
that gifted race only as xciXmaya'hia. ; that is to say, beauty and good- 
ness. The power of Greek genius manifested itself not only by its 
intensity when applying itself to science and art, but likewise by its 
expansion and fertility. All the shores of the Euxine, of lower 
Italy, Sicily, Cyrene, and considerable portions of the Gaulish coast, 
were studded with Greek colonies, proceeding from the mother 



1G0 THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 

country lite bee-swarms, not in order to extend its power, but to 
grow up themselves, and to prosper freely and independently. 
Within the same period, Macedonia, Epirus, and the inner countries 
of Asia Minor, up to the confines of the Shemites, were pervaded 
by Greek influences in art and manners ; and when at last exhausted 
by their unhappy divisions, the Greeks lost their independence, the 
hellenic spirit still maintained itself in art and science ; and, carried 
by Macedonian arms all over the Persian empire and Egypt, con- 
tinued to live and to thrive among nations of a high indigenous 
civilization. Greece, conquered by Rome, as Horace says, subdued 
the savage conqueror, and imported art and culture into the rude 
Latin world. Absorbed ethnically by amalgamation with Roman 
elements, Hellenism survived even the political wreck of Rome, and 
rose to a second though feeble development among the mongrel 
Byzantines, who, well aware that they were not Greeks, although 
speaking the Greek language, never ceased to call themselves 
Romans. Even now their country is called Roum-ili, by the Turk, 
and they call their own language Romaic. Down to our own days, 
Greek genius exerts its humanizing influences over the most highly 
cultivated part of the world, constituting the foundation of all the 
most comprehensive and properly human education. 

The national ebaracter of the Greeks, as expressed in their history, 
is fully developed in their art, which from its very beginning is 
characterized by freedom and movement, restricted by the most 
delicate feeling for measure, and refined by a tendency towards the 
ideal, without losing sight of nature. Progressive in its character, 
Greek art often change its forms of expression, — we may say from 
generation to generation, — with a fertility of genius, easier to be 
admired than explained. In Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian sculp- 
ture, we noticed successive changes in the details, but scarcely any 
real and substantial progress. Among all those nations, the rudi- 
ments of art were not materially different from their highest develop- 
ment ; whilst in Greece we are able to trace the history of sculpture 
from comparative rudeness to the highest degree of eminence — 
human perfectibility, under the rule of freedom, has never been 
more gloriously personified than in the Greek nation. 

The question of the origin of Greek art has often been raised in 
antiquity as well as in modern times, but the answers are altogether 
contradictory. 

The celebrated Roman admiral Pliny, a "dilettante" who compiled 
his Natural History indiscriminately from all the sources accessible 
to him, preserved the charming story of the Corinthian girl, who 
drew the outline of the shadow of her departing lover's face on the 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 161 

wall, aud mentions it as the first artistical attempt. Her father, he 
continues, filled the outline up with clay, and baking it, produced 
the first relief. "We can scarcely doubt that this pretty tale is 
derived from some Greek epigram, which was popular in the times 
of Pliny, for connecting art with love ; but it cannot satisfy criticism. 
"Wmckelman, the father of scientific archaeology, deduced the Greek 
statue a priori from the Herma or bust; forgetting that Hermas and 
busts, where the head has to represent the whole figure, belong to 
the later, reflecting epoch of sculpture. No little boy ever tries to 
draw a head alone, nor can he enjoy its representation ; he looks 
immediately for its complement, the body, without which he thinks 
it deficient. Indeed, busts and Hermas remained unknown to the 
national art of Egypt and Assyria ; moreover, the earliest sculptural 
works mentioned by Greek authors are statues, not busts. So are 
all the Palladia and Dsedalean works, the outlines and general fea- 
tures of which are known from their copies on vases, coins and 
gems. 164 The types of the earliest coins are figures, though soon 
succeeded by heads. Steinbuchel, with apparent plausibility, de- 
rives Greek art from Egypt. Still, it is rather going too far when 
he connects its rudiments with the mythical Egyptian immigration 
of Cecrops to Attica, and of Danaus to Argos, hypothetically placed 
about 1500 B.C., when Egyptian art was highly developed. "What- 
ever be the truth about the nationality of Cecrops and Danaus, so 
much is certain, that imitative art was unknown in Greece for at 
least seven centuries after the pretended date of their immigration; 
since the earliest records of works of art carry us scarcely beyond 
the end of the seventh century, b. c, and the earliest works extant 
do not ascend beyond the first half of the sixth century. Indeed, 
Greece and Grecians existed a long time before they possessed statu- 
aries. 165 (Plutarch, in Numa, says that images were by the learned 
considered symbolical, and deplored. Numa, the great Roman law- 
giver, forbade his people to represent Gods in the form of man or 
beasts ; and this injunction was followed for the first 470 years of the 
republic. 166 ) Another opinion, that Greek art is a daughter of the 
Assyrian, is likewise often hinted at ; but, as already mentioned, the 
earliest works of Greek sculpture are anterior, by a score of years, to 
the bloom of the Lydian empire, by which alone Greece could have 
become acquainted with the art of inner Asia. But though we cannot 
connect the rudiments of Greek sculpture either with Egypt or Assyria 

164 Prof. Edward Gerhard published many of them in his " Centurien." 
ira Pausanias, lib. VIII., and XXII. ; and lib. IX. 

i 86 Varro, apud Auffust.de Oivit. Dei, lib. IV., c, 6: — R. Payne Knight, Symbolical 
Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, London, 1818, p. 71. 
11 



162 THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 

and Babylon, we must still admit the early influence of Egyptian (Saitic) 
and oriental art over Greece. A peculiar school of ancient sculpture, 
to which the invention of casting statues is attributed, developed 
itself in the island of Samos between the 30th and 55th Olympiad 
(657-557 b. c.) extending from the time of Psammeticus of Egypt 
to the epoch of Croesus of Lydia, and Cyrus of Persia ; and history 
contains many evidences of the intercourse of the Samians with the 
kings of Egypt and Lydia, and with the merchants of Phoenicia. 
The types of the coins of Samos, — the lion's head and bull's head, — 
are similar to the Assyrian representations. As to the Egyptian 
influence, Steinbiichel justly lays peculiar stress upon the rude archaic 
type of the silver coins of Athens with the helmeted head of Minerva, 
which was persistently retained by the republic even in the times of 
her highest artistical eminence. It certainly shows the eye, repre- 
sented in the Egyptian front-view, whilst the angle of the lips is 
raised, and smiles in the later pharaonic manner. All the earliest 
coins and bas-reliefs of Greece are characterized by the same pecu- 
liarity, and some of them retained even the Egyptian head-dress in 
slightly modified forms. The anecdote preserved by Diodorus 
Siculus, concerning Telecles and Theodorus of Samos, (who are said 
to have made a bronze statue in two halves, independently of one 
another, which upon being joined were found to agree perfectly),was 
likewise explained by the invariable rules of the Egyptian canon ; 167 
though, according to our views, it has nothing to do with Egypt, and 
owes its origin probably to the traces of chiselling that removed 
the seam of the cast all along the figure, and which being of a diffe- 
rent color from the unchiselled surface of the statue, was mistaken 
for ancient soldering. 

The indubitable connexion of Greece with Egypt, under the Sa'ite 
dynasty, could not fail to have great influence on art. The Greeks 
gained from that quarter their acquaintance with the different 
mechanical processes of sculpture, carving, moulding, casting, and 
chiselling: though, too proud to acknowledge their debt to foreigners, 
they attributed the invention of the saw and file, drill and rule, to 
the mythical Cretan Dsedalus, or to the Samian Theodorus, the 
elder ; at any rate, to artists natives of the Archipelago in proximity 
with Egypt. It seems, indeed, that the opening of Egypt gave a sud- 
den impulse to sculpture and painting among the Hellenes : for nearly 
all the earliest works mentioned by the ancients belong to this period, 
with the exception, perhaps, of the casket of Cypselos, and of the 

167 Diodok., i, 98:— 60 f.:— MUller, Archceologie, \ 70, 4. 



THE ART OP THE GREEKS. 



163 



golden statue of Jupiter, dedicated by Cypselos at Olympia. 168 The 
athletic statues of Arrhachion 169 (53 Olympiad), Praxidamas (58 
01.), and Rhexibios (61 01.), at Olympia, of Cleobis and Biton, at 
Delphi 170 (about 50 01.), of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, at Athens 
(67 01.), all works of the Samian school, (and among them the 
works of art dedicated by Alyattes and Croesus to the Delphian 
temple), were the result of the intercourse with Egypt : and, from tbe 
description of some of them, as for instance, the statue of Arrhachion, 
we see that their rigid attitude must have resembled the Egyptian 
statues. Still, whatever be the foreign influences on the beginnings 
of Greek art, nobody will ever take the most archaic Greek relief for 
a specimen of Egyptian or Assyrian art. Though such Greek rudi- 
ments are less elaborate than the royal works of Thebes, Nineveh, or 
Persepolis, they have a peculiar national style unmistakably Greek. 
The earliest of all the existing Greek marble reliefs is the fragment of 
a throne found in Samothrace, now in the Louvre ; [41] which certainly 



Fig. 41. 



Fig. 42. 





Samotheacian Relief. 

belongs to the beginning of the 

Vlth century b. c. 171 and is probably 

contemporaneous- with the Pana- 

thensen vases 172 characterized by 

the figure of [42] Minerva. Both 

of them are rude, and influenced bv 

the Egyptian style. Still, the long 

and straight nose, the prominent 

chin, and the absence of individualism in the representation, are all 

as distinct from Egypt as from Assyria. 

168 Ottfeied Mullee tries to prove that both these archaic sculptures must belong to 
a period posterior to Cypselos. 

w Pausanias, vi., 18, 6. «i Millinoen, Ancient Inediled Monuments, v. iii., 1. 

«° Heeodot. 1 31. W id em ^ j, i. 



MlNEEVA. 



164 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



The sense of beauty was not yet sufficiently developed among 
Greek artists ; but it is remarkable that even in its rudiments Greek 
art, unlike tbe Egyptian, 173 bad nothing to do with portraits ; it was 
not the king, but tbe hero and the god who became the objects of 
the artist's creation. Not less striking is the complete absence of 
the landscape in Grecian art. The human form and animated nature 
are for the Greek the exclusive object of representation ; accordingly, 
he personifies day and night, the sun and the moon, time and tbe 
seasons, the earth and the sea, the mountains and the rivers ; he gives 
them the features of men ; but tbe human figure he draws is always 
a type of the race, not the e&gy of an individual. 

The peculiar archaic type, characterized by the elongated form of 
the nose, and the prominent and somewhat pointed chin, maintained 
itself up to the time of Phidias, preserving the characteristic features 
of the early Hellenes. We find the same profile on the coins of Do- 
rian and of Ionian States, in Sicily, in Attica, and in Asia Minor. 
The following heads will sufficiently explain our statement. Fig. 



Fig. 43. 



Fig. 44. 




Athenian Minerva. (Pulszky Coll.) 




Corinthian Coin. 



43 is the type of the Athenian tetradrachms. Fig. 44 is tbe enlarged 
copy of a Corinthian silver coin. The following wood-cut is taken 
from the coins of Phoceea, in Ionia [45]; whilst Fig. 46 is copied 
from one of the statues on the pediment of the temple of ^Egina, 
dedicated to Jupiter Panhellenius — the god of all the Greeks — soon 
after the battle of Salamis (Olymp. 75). 

1,3 [The art of each represents the instinctive genius of the two people, as diverse in 
intellect as in blood. 

" iEgyptiaca numinum fana plena plangoribus, 
Grseca plerumque choreis " — 
Bays Apuleius (De Genio. Socrat.) ; which is just the difference between Old and New Eng- 
land puritanism and South European catholicity. — G. E. G.] 



THE AKT OF THE GREEKS. 
Fig. 45. Fig- 46. 



165 





Phoolan Coin. 



^Egina Statue. 



The mythical victory of the united states of Hellas over the Tro- 
jans, supported by all their Asiatic kin, represented on the pediment 
of this temple, was intended to symbolize the recent victory of the 
Greeks over the Asiatic host of Xerxes. 

One generation more carries us at once to the glorious time of 
Pericles and Phidias, to the highest development of ideal grandeur, 
as seen on the sculptures of the Parthenon, never surpassed by 
human art, — the beauty, pride and triumph of youthful Greece lives 
in them. We might have taken one of the Parthenon fragments 
in the British Museum, which, although the nose is mutilated, would 
give an idea of the genius of Phidias. But artistic eminence was 
not confined to Attica alone ; in Argos and Sicyon, in Sicily and in 
Grsecia Magna, in Ionia and Cyrene, sculptors and painters grew up 
second to none but to Phidias. For more than one century, down to 
the time of Alexander of Macedon, all the intestine wars, revolutions 
and temporary oppressions, could not arrest the majestic flow of 
Greek art, characterized by freedom and ideal beauty. The head 
of a child [48] from a Lycian relief, 174 and of a warrior, [49] from a 
monument of Iconium 175 (Koniah) in Lycaonia, show that Hellenic art 
flourished even in those countries where the bulk of the nation was 
not Greek, though we ought not to forget that all those monuments 
were evidently the work of Hellenic artists ; for, as Cicero justly 
remarks, all the lands of the "barbarians" had a fringe of Greek 
countries where they reached the sea. 175 The sculptures of Lydia, 



»* Texier, Asie Mineure, III, pi. 226. 
1,5 Texier, Armenie, II, pi. 84. — 1. 

176 De Rep. II, iv, — Coloniarum vero, quce est, deducta a Grajis 
adluat 1 Ita barbarorum agris quasi adtexta videtur ora esse Grtscios. 



quam unda non 



166 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



and of all the countries of Asia Minor, differ little from the monu- 
ments of Greece proper. 

The type of the Sicilians and of the Italiots is somewhat more 
diverse ; principally characterized by the full and round chin of the 



Fig. 48. 





Ltcian Child. 



Lycaonian Soldier. 



Fig. 50. 



females, as seen in the following wood-cut [50] of Proserpina, taken 
from an intaglio in cornelian, which belongs to my collection. "We 

sometimes find the same peculiar chin even 
now among the females of Calabria and 
Sicily, but especially on the island of Ischia, 
where, according to a tradition, the Greek 
blood of its inhabitants was scarcely mixed 
by foreign intermarriages. 

One feature, sufficiently explained by the 
institutions of Greece, is common to all 
these monuments of Hellenic art, viz : the 
absence of portraits, — individuality being 
merged into the glorification of the human 
form by a purely ideal treatment. Just as 
in life the idea of the State absorbed the 
interests and even the rights of the individual, so individuality was 
ignored in the art of Greece ; we never meet with portraits during 
all the time of Greek independence; for even the representations 
meant to be portraits were ideal. Alcibiades, according to Clemens 
Alexandrinus, 177 became a Mercury, and Pericles looked a demigod. 
A rock-relief on a tomb in Lycia, at Cadyanda, the cast of which is 




Peoseepina. 
(Pulszky Coll.) 



1,1 Admonit. adversus gentes, p. 35. 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



167 



now in the British Museum, 178 inscribed with the historical names of 
Hecatomnos, Mesos, Seskos, £c, contains no portrait, but only ideal 
figures. The Crcesus of the magnificent vase of the Louvre might 
be taken for a Jupiter, were it not designated by the name. It was 
not before the time of Alexander the Macedonian that real portraits 
began to be made. Lysistratus, brother of the great sculptor Lysippus, 
was in Greece the first who made a plaster-cast of the face of living 
persons, and who, according to Pliny, 179 made real likenesses, whilst 
his predecessors had tried to make them rather beautiful than faith- 
ful. Pliny's testimony is fully borne out by the remaining monu- 
ments of art belonging to the period of Alexander : they show during 
the life of the great king some marked attempts at individuality, 
though idealism is not yet excluded from the portrait. The head of 
the conqueror of Persia, on his own coins, is scarcely distinguishable 
from the type of his mythic ancestor Hercules. Under his successor, 
Lysimachus, the portrait of Alexander on the Macedonian coins is by 
far more individual. The beautiful bust of Demosthenes I8 ° [51] in the 
Vatican, though it be the work of a later age, is certainly a copy of 
a bust contemporaneous with the last great citizen of Greece. It 
exhibits the peculiar features and lisping mouth of the eloquent 
unfortunate patriot ; still, the upper part of the head is undoubtedly 
ideal. A classical cornelian in my collection, with the intaglio head 
of Demetrius Poliorcetes [52], shows the efforts of some artists of the 



Fig. 51. 



Fig. 52. 





Demosthenes. 



Demetrius Poliokcetes, (Pulszky coll.) 



Macedonian period to blend idealism with individualism. This 
king's heroic beauty made the task easier; but as, in those times, 
a portrait always implied a kind of apotheosis, a bull's horn was 

178 Synopsis of the British Museum, Lycian Room, Nos. 150-152. 

1,9 XXXV, 44. 18 ° Visconti, Iconographti grecque, PI. 29, fig. 2. 



168 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



Fig. 53. 




Perseus. 



Fig. 54. 



added to the head to designate Demetrius as the son of Neptune ; 
whilst in order to combine the horn with the human features, the hair 
was carved stiff, reminding one of the rigidity of a bull's hair. 
Equally grand is the portrait of Perseus [53], the last king of Mace- 
donia, on a cornelian cameo in the imperial library at Paris. 181 It so 

much resembles some ancient hero, that 
for a considerable time it was taken for 
an ideal head of Ulysses. Indeed, if we 
wish to get real Hellenic portraits, we 
must leave the territory of Greece, and 
seek for them among the more realistic 
nations pervaded by Hellenism, amid 
whom Greek art descended from the 
loftier heights of imaginative beauty, to 
tread the humbler paths of reality. 
Hitherto no actual portrait has been dis- 
covered belonging to the times of repub- 
lican Greece. The following beautiful 
head [54] on an Asiatic silver coin, in the 
British Museum, which bears the simple 
inscription BA2IAEfi2, (the coin) " of the 
king," is with the greatest plausibility 
attributed to the younger Cyrus : the die 
being sunk by some Ionian Greek at the 
time when this Satrap of Asia Minor rose 
in rebellion against his brother Arta- 
xerxes, and assumed the title of the king. 
Still, the features can scarcely be fairly 
taken for a portrait ; they are altogether 
ideal, in fact the embellished representa- 
tion of the purest Arian type. 
The aboriginal barbarism of the remoter provinces of the Mace- 
donian empire, — which was strongly modified, but never entirely 
overcome by the civilization of the conquerors, — renders the history 
of Hellenism in Asia, after the death of Alexander, most instructive. 
It is recorded on the relics of its art, especially on the coins of those 
Greek dynasties which were not surrounded by Greek populations. 
From the shores of the Euxine to the confines of India, they pro- 
claim the supremacy of Greek genius. Still, Hellenism maintains 
its glory only there where a continuous, uninterrupted, influx of 
Greek elements keeps up the original blood and spirit of the con- 

181 Millin, Monuments Inidits., 1, XIX ; and Frontispiece to the Bulletin archeol. de I'Athe- 
ncBum Frangais of June, 1855. 




Cteits the younger. 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



169 



querors, as for instance at the court of the Seleueidse at Antioch, and 
of the Ptolemies at Alexandria. But here the degeneration of the 
royal houses could not destroy the fertility of Hellenic art ; though in 
all the countries which were locally separated from Greece, Hellenism 
declined, and went over into barharism so soon as the original Greek 
blood of the conquerors was amalgamated with, and absorbed by, 
native intermixture. 

The coins of the kingdom of Bactria give the most striking illus- 
tration of this general rule. During the wars between the Seleucidse 
and the Ptolemies, Theodotus, the governor of Bactria about the 
middle of the third century, B.C., declared himself independent of 
Syria, and founded the Greek dynasty of the Bactrian kingdom. 
About the same time the Parthians rose likewise in revolt against 
Antiochus Theos, and their success cut the Bactrians off from 
Greece proper, and even from the Grecians of Syria. Still, for about 
a century, Greek art beyond the Hindoo Kush did not decline. 

The portrait of king Eucratides, king of Bactria, b. c. 170 [55], is, 
on the coins, a most creditable specimen of the taste and workman- 
ship of his artists. 182 The isolation of the royal family, however, and 
its remoteness from Greece and from Hellenic influences, unavoid- 
ably brought about a relapse into barbarism. King Hermseus, lord 
of Bactria, b. c. 98 [56], on a coin in the British Museum, is, accord- 



Fig. 55. 



Fig. 56. 



Fig. 57. 






Eucratides. 



HeBMjEUS. 



Kadphtses. 



ing to his features, apparently a descendant of Heliocles; but the 
workmanship of the coin is heavy and coarse, and after seeing it we 
can scarcely be surprised at learning that his dynasty was soon 
superseded by rude Turanian invaders, who, having no alphabet of 
their own, maintained at first the Greek, and then adopted the 
Indian letters and language. In the execution of the types of their 
coins, they exhibit the rudest barbarism. King Kadphyses [57], 



182 p or these and other examples, cf. Wjlson, Ariana Antigua, London, 1841. 



170 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



a. d. 50, had his name inscribed in Greek characters, on his coin, 
now in the British Museum ; but the shape of his skull is Turanian, 
and the die-sinker must have been a half-civilized and probably 
half-bred Bactrian. 

The series of the Arsacide coins is equally instructive, and leads 
to the same result. The Macedonian conquest destroyed at once 
the old Persian institutions and civilization ; for, although Alexander 
assumed the royal insignia and maintained the court etiquette 
and provincial administration of Persia, yet both he and his cour- 
tiers remained Greeks, and could not transform themselves into 
Asiatics. His successors in Asia, the Seleucidse, were still more 
averse to the old customs of the empire. They therefore removed 
their residence and the capital of the empire from Babylon, which 
at that time was still highly flourishing, so far west as Antioch ; and 
tried to introduce Greek manners and despotic centralized-civiliza- 
tion, into the provinces adjoining the seat of dominion. The out- 
lying Satrapies could not long be kept in subjection: and during the 
war between Antiochus Theos and Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, 
Arsaces the Satrap stirred up the Parthians (256 B.C.), and at the 
head of his Scythian horsemen established the Parthian empire in 
opposition to the Greek Seleucidse, who could not hold the country 
beyond the Tigris. But Arsaces did not go back to the Achseme- 
nian institutions: he kept the Arian Persians in subjection, who from 
the time of Cyrus to Alexander had been the rulers of the Empire : 
his realm might easier be characterized as the revival of the Scythian 
empire of Astyages. The Parthians had no indigenous art of their 
own : according to Lucian, they were 6'u <piXoxaXoi, not friends of art, 183 
and they had to borrow their artistic forms from their neighbors, 
just as the Shemitic nations had clone before them. 

"While assuming the empire, they copied the Greek language and 

the Greek types of the Seleu- 
cidse on their coins ; and the 

portraits of Arsaces I. [58], 

B. c. 256, and of (Phraates I.) 

Arsaces V. [59], b. c. 190- 

165, on their silver coins in 

the British Museum, can 

scarcely be distinguished 

from Greek coins, as regards 

art: but the globular shape 

of the Parthian skull cha- absaoes V. 

racterizes them sufficiently 

163 Lucian, de domo, 5. 



Fig. 58. 



Fig. 59. 





THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



171 



Fig. 60. 



Fi<j. 61. 





Aksaces XII. 



Aksaces XIX. 



as not Hellenic. The conquest of the Syrian Empire by the Romans 
soon cut off the influence of Hellenism, and isolated the Parthians, 

whose art relapsed gradu- 
ally into their original bar- 

harism. The portrait of Ar- 

saces XH. [60] (Phraates 

IH.), B.C. 50-60, belongs 

to the beginning of the 

decline of art, though this 

king was a contemporary 

of Lucullus, Pompey, and 

Julius Csesar. Arsaces 

the XlXth [61], (Volo- 

geses rV\, a. d. 196) ex- 
hibits a rudeness as if all the traditions of art had become forgotten. 
Still, he was a contemporary of the emperor Commodus. One genera- 
tion after him we see a new, national, Arian art reviving in Persia 
under the Sassanides. 

Similar causes led to similar results in the Crimea, or as the 
ancients called it, in the Taurian or Cimmerian Chersonesus. 
Greek colonies from Heraclea and Miletus established themselves 
here among the aboriginal barbarians, and 
introduced art and civilization. Kings of 
these nations stood in friendly intercourse 
with Athens and Byzantium, who used to 
buy here their corn ; until Mithridates the 
Great [62], king of Pontus, occupied the 
country (in 108 b. c.) which was to become 
the scene of his suicide. His portrait with 
the rich flowing hair, probably a copy from 
a statue representing him driving a cha- 
riot, 181 belongs to the wonders of Grecian art. 
_ The Greek dynasty of Mithridates, in the 
Crimea, died off in the second generation with Asander ; and was 
succeeded by a long series of indigenous kings, who, without any 
historical importance, maintained their sway down to the 4th century 
of our era. During their reign the Greek colonies of Panticapreum, 
Chersonnesus,Phanagoria,and Gorgippia, lost their Hellenic charac- 
ters by the continuous immigration of barbarians ; and all the tradi- 
tions of art disappeared little by little among the half-breed inhabi- 
tants of the country, — until all Grecian blood, and with it, civiliza- 
tion, became absorbed by intercourse with the barbarians. The 



Fig. 62. 




Mithridates. 



184 Visconti, Iconographie, ii. p. 182; note 4, Milan edition. 



172 



THE ART OF THE GREEKS. 



following likenesses of Sauromates I. [63] (13-17 B. a), Rhescuporis 
II. [64] under Domitian, and Rhescuporis III. [65], (212-219), from 
their coins in the British Museum, show the progressing rudeness of 



Fig. 63. 



Fig. 64. 



Fig. 65. 






Sauromates. 



Rhescuporis II. 



Rhescuporis III. 



the representations, as well as the ebbing of Greek blood among a 
world of "barbarians," who, according to their features, belonged 
to the Slavonic race. 

We might have given equally instructive specimens of the power 
and successive extinction of Hellenism in Thrace, Cilicia, Adiabene, 
— from the coins of those countries, — clearly proving that foreign 
art cannot maintain itself among unartistical races for any length of 
time, but must decline and cease so soon as the artistical race which 
imported it has become thoroughly amalgamated with, and has 
merged into, the bulk of the natives. 



VII. 



•THE ART OF ROME. 



At the time of the revival of letters, when the attention of the 
scholars and princes of Italy was for the first time turned towards the 
remains of antiquity, all the statues and reliefs found in the peninsula 
were taken for Roman ; and the antiquaries liked to explain any 
antique representation from Livy's history, and Ovid's metamor- 
phoses. Grecian life was at that time nearly unknown ; the study 
of Greek literature remained subordinate to that of Roman ; and 
the works of antiquity were regarded as illustrations of tbe Roman 
classics. When, on the other hand, Winckelman and his philosophi- 
cal school applied a deeper criticism to the relics of ancient art, treat 
ing them as equal in importance to the literary remains of classical 
antiquity, a reactionary notion spread all over Europe, that the 
Romans had no national art at all ; and the father of scientific archse- 



THE ART OF ROME. 173 

ology, "Winckelnian himself, says: 185 "I defy those who speak of the 
Roman style of art to describe its peculiarities or to determine its 
character." About this time It was proved with considerable display 
of erudition that fine arts were paid, but not honored, at Rome. Plu- 
tarch was cited, who says in sober earnest that, however we might 
admire the Olympian Jupiter, nobody would wish to become Phi- 
dias : 186 and Petronius also, 187 who, though speaking satirically, still 
expressed the common Roman feeling by saying, that ' a nugget of 
gold is more beautiful in the sight of God and man, than anything 
produced by those foolish Greeks, Apelles and Phidias.' Accordingly, 
it was believed that all the Roman sculptures are the work of Greeks, 
mostly freed-men, who lived in that capital of the old world. Such 
views were quite in keeping with the prevalent idea that Roman and 
Greek mythology was altogether identical. The monuments of 
Rome, however, were soon more thoroughly sifted ; and a number of 
works of art were discovered at Pompeii, nearly all of them of 
Italian workmanship, — and that, between the emperor Augustus 
(under whom the town was rebuilt, after having been nearly destroyed 
by an earthquake), and the emperor Titus, under whom it was 
buried. Archaeologists are, therefore, now enabled to fix more 
precisely the peculiarities and the character of the Roman style ; 
although we must acknowledge that it is but a slight modification of 
Greek art. The original Romans had no feeling for fine art ; they 
were the offspring of unartistical Umbrians and Sabines, with an 
admixture of Etruscans, who themselves possessed only a varnish of 
art superinduced. The few monuments which adorned republican 
Rome before the conquest of Grsecia Magna, — the statues of the 
Capitol and the efligies of the kings — were without exception of Tus- 
can workmanship ; so were their copper-coinage, their house-furni- 
ture, their earthenware and bronze vases. The Romans never vied 
with their neighbors either in mechanical skill or in artistical feeling ; 
their only task was conquest and aggrandizement. "When at last, 
by the accumulation of wealth, luxury and desire of display intro- 
duced a yearning for works of art, and that statues and pictures began 
to play an important part at all the public sbows, triumphs and enter- 
tainments, it was easier to plunder the provinces and to fill Rome 
with the most celebrated treasures of art from the temples and 
market-places of Greece, than to get them executed by native artists 
on the Tiber itself. Still, the growing demand and failing supply at 
length fostered art at Rome ; and though the artists were mostly of 
foreign extraction, — for it was not respectable for a Roman to be a 

i 85 Cabinet Slosch, p. 397. 1S6 Vita Periclis. 18 ' Satyrkon, c. 88. 



174 THE ART OF ROME. 

sculptor — Roman nationality impressed its stamp on the coins and 
gems, reliefs and statues, marbles and bronzes, of tbe time of the 
Emperors. The principal features of Roman art are a somewhat 
ponderous dignity, and a want of poetical inspiration, but withal a 
close imitation of native, national truthfulness, and great regard for 
individuality; without that Greek freshness, freedom and harmony, 
which rouse in the beholder the consciousness of the divine nature 
of our soul. The composition of the Roman works of art is heavy, 
the execution often over-polished and empty. "Whilst the Greek 
artist selected his subjects from mythology, the Roman liked to re- 
present sacrifices, triumphal processions, military marches, battles, 
and " allocutions," marriage-feasts and other scenes of domestic life. 
The Greek idealized the features of great men ; the Roman did not 
ennoble the ugliness of old Tiberius, the idiocy of Domitian, and 
the ferocious looks of Commodus and Caracalla. The Greek made 
scarcely any distinction, in sculpture, between the Greek and the 
barbarian — the same idealism surrounds them both, and assimilates 
them to one another; the Roman artist made a charaeteristical dif- 
ference between enemies of Rome and the civis Romanus. Still, at the 
time of the Emperors, the Roman type itself had ceased to be con- 
stant. Citizenship having been extended to half a world, barbarians 
constituted the bulk of the army, and their equally-barbarian officers 
were raised first into the Senate, then to the imperial throne. Accord- 
ingly, the artists of Rome gave, on the whole, less importance to the 
type than to the costume of the foreign hostile nations, by which 
alone they differed from the mongrel Romans, who then represented 
a cosmopolitan amalgam of all the white races. On the great 
cameos of tbe time of Augustus and Tiberius, at Vienna and Paris 
(which, by their dramatic and picturesque composition of the groups, 
materially differ from Greek reliefs), the Pannonian and Vindelician 
prisoners have no individual features; nor is the statue of the "river 
Jordan " on the triumphal arch of the emperor Titus characterized 
by a Shemitic physiognomy ; but, on the column and arch of Trajan, 
wbich contains tbe best of all the Roman works of art, we easily 
recognise the Dacian [70] whose features are perpetuated in the Wal- 
lachian of our days. In the dying gladiator of the Capitol, and on 
the sarcophagus of the Vigna Ammendola, 188 we see the Celtic Gaul 
[71] represented; and Mr. Gottling recognises an ancient German 
[69] in the statue of a prisoner which adorned a triumphal arch at 
Rome. 

After the eclectic idealism prevalent under the reign of the 
Emperor Hadrian, we no longer find any endeavor to fix the 

186 Monumenli Inedili dell' Institute Archeologica di Roma, 1, PI. 



THE ART OF ROME. 



175 



national peculiarities of foreign nations on monuments of art. The 
Teutonic Markomans on the columns of Antoninus, the Turanian 
Parthians on the arch of Septimus Severus, differ only by their cos- 
tume from Dacians, and from the Roman soldiers who fight against 
them; and we must admit that the pharaonic Egyptian artists 
remained unsurpassed, even by Greeks and Romans, in the accuracy 
with which they observed and rendered the national type of all the 
tribes with which they happened to come into contact. The Assy- 
rians and Persians were second in this respect to the Egyptians ; still 
they were, on the whole, faithful enough, whereas with the Greeks any 
national peculiarity merged in the glorification of the human form : 
accordingly, Egyptians and Asiatics are by them drawn and sculp- 
tured with Hellenic features. The Roman is by far more truthful, 
but his art is short-lived. Before Augustus it is either Etruscan or 
Greek ; after Septimus Severus it loses its national character, and 
step by step transforms itself into the Byzantine Christian. Two 
centuries carry us from the beginning of Roman art to its decay ; 
its full bloom lasted only just for the score of years which embraces 
the reign of the emperor Trajan, since under Hadrian it lost its 
Roman features, and was swamped by an elegant and refined imita- 
tion of every style of art. About the same time that the imperial 
throne fell into the hands of Asiatic Syrians, of Africans, Arabs, and 
northern barbarians, Roman art became barbarous, and revived only 
when, about the time of Justinian and his successors, a new nation- 
ality, — the Grseco-Byzantine — consolidated and crystallized itself 
under the influences of Christianity out of the mixture of all the 
races in the Roman empire. 

The earliest authentic Roman portrait 
we know is the likeness of P. Cornelius 
Scipio Africanus [67]. 189 All earlier effi- 
gies were either not portraits at all, — as 
for instance, the seven Tuscan statues of 
the kings, mentioned in the old authors, 
which stood before the Capitol, — or 
they are too indistinct to be of use for 
ethnology. This applies to the heads 
we see on the family coins of Rome, upon 
which the magistrates liked to perpetu- 
ate the memory of illustrious ancestors. 
None of these silver coins are anterior to 
the year 269 b. c ; their size is small 



Fig. 67. 




Scipio Africanus. 



189 Visconti, Iconographie rornaine, Paris, 1817, pi. Ill, fig. 2. 



176 



THE ART OF ROME. 



and their workmanship little artistical. Besides, we know from 
Pliny that the family pride of the Romans eared more for the names 
than for the likenesses of their ancestors. The admiral complains 
that whilst the original wax-effigies represented the great men such 
as they really had been (they were probably casts of the faces of the 
deceased), a later age delighted in silver busts and in the workman- 
ship of great masters (probably Greeks, and given to idealizing), 
without regard to the likeness. Pliny's complaint cannot apply to 
the portrait of Scipio, which is entirely individual, and of that stern 
and energetic cast which fully expresses the Roman character. 
Scipio may be taken for a good specimen of the Roman patrician 
type; for, at his time the aristocracy had not yet lost its national 
purity by the admixture of foreign blood. Not less characteristic 
is the head of Agrippa [68], — the friend, minister and son-in-law of 
Augustus, and maternal ancestor of the emperors Caligula, Claudius 
and Nero. Next to the Roman type represented by these two highly 
expressive portraits, let us consider the features of their enemies. 
Pig. 69 is the bust of a "barbarian" found in Trajan's forum, now iD 



Fig. 68. 



Fig. 69. 





Vipsanitjs Aokippa, [Pulszhy coll.) 



Bakbakian. 



the British Museum. Mr. Combe, in his description of the ancient 
marbles of the British Museum, after adverting to the feelings of 
rage, disappointment and revenge strongly marked in this face, 
inclines to believe that the head was intended to represent Arminius 
the German hero, who defeated Varus, and was defeated by Germa- 
nicus. Mr. Gottling, in an essay which has become very popular in 
Germany, attributes this head with specious reasons to Thumelicus, 
the fighter of Ravenna, son of Arminius. "We therefore scarcely err 
in seeking the original Teutonic type in this excellent bust. 



THE ART OF ROME. 



177 



Fig. 70. 



The effigy of Decebalus, — prince of the Dacians [70], 190 is copied 
from a bas-relief originally belonging to 
the triumphal arch of Trajan, which by the 
addition of later patchwork has been trans- 
formed into an arch in honor of the 
emperor Constantine. The effigy is pecu- 
liarly interesting for its resemblance to the 
present Wallachians, true descendants of 
the ancient Dacians. This similitude 
between the Dacians and "Wallachians is 
not exclusively confined to the cast of 
features nor to the costume, since we see 
on the reliefs of the column of Trajan, 
decorated with episodes of his Dacian 

campaign, that even this moral character has in one respect remained 
the same. The Romans seem to have been peculiarly struck by the 
ferocious treatment of prisoners among these Dacians; and they 
did not fail to represent the Dacian females, who tortured the disarmed 
and fettered Romans with raving brutality. The same feature 
recurred in the Hungarian war of 1849. Hungarian prisoners were 
tortured and murdered by the servile Wallachian population, — the 
females being always the most cruel among them. 




Dacian. 



Fig. 71. 




"We copy the head of a Celtic Gaul 
[71] from a sarcophagus found in the 
vineyard Ammendola at Rome. It 
is characterized by a peculiar Gallic 
necklace (torques), and by angular 
expressive features. For those of our 
readers who are less acquainted with 
the latest archaeological researches 
we mention the fact, that the cele- 
brated dying-Gladiator of the Capitol 

has been recognized to be a Celt, by Celtic Gaul. 

Nibby 191 and by Raoul-Rochette. 

This suggests a digression. Having given the earliest effigy of a 
Celt, we feel bound to copy likewise the features of a Norman, in 
order to put the principal ancestors of the inhabitants of the British 
Islands and of North America side by side. William the Conqueror 
lived in times and among nations unpropitious to art : his likeness, 
[72] therefore, cannot be peculiarly characteristic. It is taken from 

190 Bellorius, Veteres Arms, Rome, 1690, PI. 44, "Victoria Dacica." 

191 Observazioni sopra la slalua del Gladialore moribondo: — Bulletin universel, Till, 1830, 
Aout. ; compare Pliny, XXXIV. 19-24. 

12 



178 



THE ART OF ROME. 



Fig. 72. 




WlLLELMT. 



the celebrated "Bayeux tapestry," 192 which is contemporaneous with 

this king, and attributed by tradition 
to the needle of Mathilda, queen of the 
conqueror. "We are sorry that, together 
with the Norman type, we are unable 
to give a standard Anglo-Saxon effigy; 
but queen Mathilda does not seem to 
have remarked any peculiar differ- 
ence between these two different na- 
tionalities; which, indeed, were of 
the same Scandinavo-Teutonic stock, 
— deduction made of the crowd of 
continental "flibustiers" who nocked to 
the colors of William, and who were 
Normans only by courtesy. Accord- 
ingly, king Harold, on the Bayeux tapestry, resembles his cousin 
William, with the slight exception, that he and his Anglo-Saxons 
wore mustachios, whereas the Normans are closely shaved. 

We continue. If it should now be asked what representations of 
the different nationalities of old have to prove about the original 
"unity" or "diversity" of the human race, we point to the unmistakable 
constancy of the types of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Wallachs, Ne- 
groes, Jews, — which are at the present day exactly such as were repre- 
sented on ancient monuments, — and quote Dr. Prichard's words 
as to the importance of this fact : " If it should be found that within 
the period of time to which historical testimony extends, the distin- 
guishing characters of human races have been constant and undevi- 
ating, it would become a matter of great difficulty to reconcile this 
conclusion with the inferences obtained from other considera- 
tions." 193 

To return to Roman art. Its importance stands in no relation to its 
real merits ; it had a marked influence not only over early Christian 
sculpture, but even on mediaeval and modern art. The works of 
Egypt, Assyria, and Etruria, belong altogether to the domain of 
archaeology : modern artists disdain to be instructed by them, although 
they might learn from them that no style of art ever maintained 
itself on any other basis than nationality ; — but they cannot emanci- 
pate themselves from Greek and principally from Roman influences. 
It belongs to the peculiarities of our age, that, whilst the purity of the 
plastical forms of the Greek statues could not fail to maintain their 
importance as models for statuaries, the Roman bas-relief continues to 

192 Vetusta Monumenla, Soc. of Antiquaries, 1822, vi. pi. 17. 

193 Researches, vol. iii. p. 2, edition of 1837. 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 179 

be imitated by our sculptors. They prefer its crowded, melo-drania- 
tic groups, and the slight attempt at perspective (by raising the 
figures of the first plan and gradually depressing those of the second 
and third), to the graceful and simple Greek bas-relief, which is regu- 
lated by the artistic feeling of the sculptor, not by unartistical rules, 
— for instance, on the friezes of the Parthenon and of the Mausoleum. 
But, we ought not to forget that the sculptors of our day belong 
mostly to the neo-Latin nations : and being imbued with the spirit of 
Roman literature in preference to that of Greek, they feel instinctively 
a greater attraction towards the works of imperial Rome, than of re- 
publican Greece. So, too, does the bulk of the public ; which appre- 
ciates much more the elegance of the statues of the Belvidere, — all 
of them works of the Roman period, — than the sublime beauty of 
the Elgin marbles, and the chaste drawing on some vases of Etruria 
and Grecia magna. 

"We have now, in the course of our ethnological survey of the 
history of art, arrived at the decay of the nations of classical anti- 
quity, and reached the dawn of Christian art. "We might easily 
pursue our researches down to the present day, through the Byzantine 
period, into the exclusively-national art of Italy, of Germany, of 
Spain, of France, of Belgium, and of Holland; but the characteristics 
of all these " schools," or rather nationalities, of painting, are so well 
known that it is not necessary to point out their diversity. The 
history of Christian art has often been written, and leads invariably 
to the result, that art never developed itself but on a national basis ; 
that close imitation of foreign forms never could impart life to art; and 
that eclecticism invariably leads to destruction. Accordingly, the 
Academies of painting and sculpture, founded upon eclecticism, 
and rejecting art's national development, became always and every- 
where the tombstones of art. 



VIII. — ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 

The time has not yet arrived for writing the history of the indige- 
nous art of the Red-race. The monuments of the ante-Columbian 
civilization of America but little regarded in their country, are 
excessively rare in Europe. There are but few persons, either in the 
United States or the Spanish republics, who care for antiquity. The 
English race is too much occupied with the interests of the present, 
the Spanish too much disturbed with fears about the future, and 
therefore, both too unsettled and too uncomfortable, to devote 
much attention to the relics of an antiquity, which, however impor- 



180 ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 

tant for the philosopher and the historian of human civilization, has 
neither the charms and beauty of the Grseco-Roman period, nor the 
historical interest of Egyptian, Assyrian, or early Christian art. The 
Red nations, of whose works we speak, are strangers to us ; their 
civilization remained entirely unconnected with our history; and 
was too different from, and too inferior to, the development of the 
Japetides, Shemites, and Turanians. Even Chinese art has a greater 
chance of becoming the object of study, than the monuments of the 
mound-builders, of the Toltecs and Aztecs of Mexico and Central 
America, and of the Quichuas and Aymaras of Peru and the Lake 
of Titicaca. China is still a mighty empire ; its civilization, how- 
ever strange, cannot be ignored by us; and the monuments of 
Chinese art may facilitate a correct appreciation of the institutions, 
the religion and morals, of more than three hundred millions of 
men, — with whom, at the same time, traffic is profitable. 

American art, on the other hand, is in no way linked to the present 
age. The refined amateur is repelled by the homeliness of most of 
the artistical relics, which the historian is, as yet, unable to connect 
with certain dates and personages. This is the reason why but very 
few persons care for Mexican, Central American, and Peruvian anti- 
quity ; and how it comes to pass, that among all the public Museums 
of Europe there are but two, the Louvre at Paris, 191 and the British 
Museum in London, which systematically admit American monu- 
ments into their treasuries of art. Of private collections I know but 
four : the Central American antiquities at the country-seat of the 
late Mr. Freudenthal, in Moravia (Austria), who fell a victim to his 
zeal in searching for antiquities in the tropical climate of Guatemala, 
and died soon after his return to Vienna ; the extensive collection 
of Mr. Uhde at Handschuhsheim, near Heidelberg (Grand duchy 
Baden); and the two Mexican and Peruvian cabinets of MM. 
Jomard and Allier at Paris. M. Adrien de Longperier published, 
in 1852, a Notice of the monuments exhibited in the American Hall 
of the Louvre, from which we see that it contains : 

I. — 680 relics of Mexican art, consisting of mythological statuettes, 
vases, gems, seals, utensils, instruments of music, weights and mea- 
sures in volcanic stone, granite, basalt, terra-cotta, bronze, crystal, 
obsidian, jade, jasper, and wood. 

n. — A few fragments from Palenque. 

HI. — About three hundred statuettes and vases, implements and 

194 The Louvre has, "within the last few years, acquired the Mexican Antiquities of M. 
Latour Allard, published in Lord KiDgsborough's great work; received as gifts the equally 
important Peruvian antiquities of Mons. Augrand, together with the smaller collections of 
Messrs. Massieu de Clairval, Audifred, V. Schb'elcher, and several other gentlemen. 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 181 

woollen fabrics of Peru, from Cuzco, Lambazeque, Quiloa, Bodegon, 
Arica and Truxillo. 

IV. — Some twenty artistical objects from the Antilles and Hayti. 

The collections of the British Museum have not yet been described 
and published. Huddled together as they are, in one of the smaller 
rooms, with Hindoo, Burmese, Japanese, and Chinese idols, and 
with the implements and curiosities of the South-Sea isles, they fail 
to attract the attention of the visitors. The Mexican Cabinet con- 
sisting principally in pottery, or in statuettes and reliefs in terra 
cotta, is one of the most extensive, and shows that the traditions of 
Aztec art long survived the conquest by Cortez ; since we find a 
Spanish Viceroy moulded in clay by a native artist, who did not fail 
to distort the features of this Spanish hidalgo into the typical Mexi- 
can forms, no less than to give him their American cast of skull, 
and of the cheek-bones ! The Peruvian antiquities are likewise ex- 
clusively of baked clay ; some of them gems of native art. The 
Museum might easily enrich its American treasures; for, as I 
learned from the most reliable sources, many Peruvian gold and 
silver idols find their way into the Bank of England and the Royal 
Mint, where they are melted down ; since they have no artistic, if 
great archaeological, and still greater, it would seem, monetary value. 

Many American Antiquities were published in the extensive, and 
more or less costly works, of Kingsborough, Humboldt, Lenoir, 
Warden, Tschudi, Rivero,Vf aldeck, Catherwood, d'Orbigny, Stephens, 
Norman, Brantz Mayer, Bartlett, and Squier ; but, failing to interest 
the public in the same way as Asiatic and European antiquities, 
they remained unknown beyond the circle of some ethnological 
scholars, so that few persons are aware of the extent and the artisti- 
cal importance of the Monuments of America. We have, in the 
following wood-cuts, selected the most characteristic and best sculp- 
tured specimens of the ante-Columbian art of the new world, in hope 
that they may become the means of exciting a greater interest for 
them on both sides of the Atlantic. As it is the object of illustra- 
tions to instruct by view, as well, and often more than by explication, 
we add but few words to them. 

The great majority of the ancient monuments of America will for- 
ever remain unconnected with history, 195 — mysterious relies of a civi- 

195 [I perceive that an anonymous "viator" advertises in the National Intelligencer (Wash- 
ington, D. C, 18th October, 1856), a forthcoming volume, wherein "more than twenty 
gentlemen, embracing the bench, the bar, the clergy, and members of the medical profes- 
sion, have come forward " — all in Western Virginia, too — and are actually going to vouch 
for the indubitable authenticity of that "canard" — so famous, among archteologists, as 
Mr. Schoolcraft's Ohio pebble, engraved in 22 different alphabets at "Grave Creek flat!" 

To facilitate its reappearance in good society, no less than to increase the receipts of 



182 ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 

lization which they alone record and expound. Mexican antiquities, 
however, will soon receive an additional importance by the publica- 
tion (as we learn from his friend Mr. E. Geo. Squier) of M. Aubin, 
the French savant who has devoted a life of study to the researches 
on the Aztec language and literature; having, by a residence of thir- 
teen years in Mexico, and by the lucky discovery of the collections 
and MSS. of Botturini, become able to obtain all the materials and 
the information for deciphering them, so as to elucidate the history 
of the Aztec empire previous to Cortez. A few years hence, the 
ante-Columbian history of Mexico will be as accessible to us as the 
early annals of any European nation; for hieroglyphical documents 
are not wanting which contain this information : whilst the researches 
of Botturini, which in the past century were cut short by the Span- 
ish Inquisition, have been now resumed by M. Aubin ; and, in his 
hands, have afforded the key for reading these sealed books. 196 

The hunter tribes of America evince no feeling for plastical beauty ; 
yet withal, like the Turks and the Celts, they have a considerable 
talent for decorative designs, and some perceptions of the harmony 
of colors. The originality and ornamental combination of their bead- 
work and embroidery is sufficiently known, but they always fail in 
rendering the human form. Ear higher was the civilization of that 
race which preceded them in the trans- Alleghanian States. "We call 

that " Museum," I give this announcement a wider circulation than the threatened book is 
destined to obtain, by referring the curious to Squier's "Observations on the Aboriginal 
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," New York, 8vo., 1847, pp. 71-9 (Extract from the 
Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii.) ; and to Types of Mankind, pp. 
652-3.— G. R. G] 

196 Among recent articles which show how this new school of American archaeologists 
augments, — consult Squier, " Aztec Picture-writing " [New York Tribune, Nov. 24, 1852) : — 
Bartlett, " The Aboriginal Semi-civilization of the Great California Basin, with a Refuta- 
tion of the popular theory of the Northern Origin of the Aztecs of Mexico " (New York 
Herald, April 4, 1854): — Aubin, "Lang. Americaine. Langue, Litterature et Ecriture 
Mexicaines " (Encyclopedic du XIX"' Siecle, Tome xxvi., Supplement, pp. 500-7) : — Squier, 
" Les Indiens Guatusos du Nicaragua" (Alhenmum Francais, 22 B^cembre, 1855): — Prisse 
d'Avennes, "Honduras — AmeYique centrale (L' Illustration, Paris, 8 De'cenibre, 1855): — 
Brasseur de Boiirbourg, " Letter from Rabinal — Department of Vera Paz " (London Alhc- 
nceum, Dec. 8, 1855) : — Idem, " Notes d'un Voyage dans l'AmeYique centrale — Lettre a, M. 
Alfred Maury" (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, Paris, Aout, 1855): — with Squier's cri- 
tique on said letter (Op. cit., D6c. 1855): — Trubner, "The New Discoveries in Guatemala," 
and "Central American Archaeology" {London Athenccum, 12th Jan., and 31st May, 1856) ; 
since enhanced in interest by Don Jose Antonio Urrutia's "Discovery of additional Mo- 
numents of Antiquity in Central America" (Ibidem, 13 Dec. 1856). The new work of Dr. 
Soherzer brings another distinguished pioneer into the field; and we have reason to hope 
that much light will be thrown upon the Indian languages of New Mexico, California, &c, 
by the conjoint researches of two gentlemen eminently qualified for the task — Mr. John R. 
Bartlett (late U. S. Boundary Commissioner to Mexico, and now Secretary of State for 
Rhode Island), and Prof. Wm. W. Turner (of the U. S. Patent Office, Washington, D. C). 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 



18 



8 



Fig. 73. 



them "mound-builders," from the regular fortifications which they 
have erected in several of the western and southern States. 197 The 
Natchez, destroyed by the French of Louisiana, in the last century, 
seem to have, in part, belonged to them. A most characteristic, — we 
may say artistically-beautiful — head [73] in red pipe-clay, the work- 
manship of these unknown mound-builders, dug up and published 
by Squiee,, 198 exhibits the peculiar In- 
dian features so faithfully, and with 
such sculptural perfection, that we can- 
not withhold our admiration from their 
artistical proficiency. It proves three 
things : 1st, That these " mound-build- 
ers" were American Indians in type : — 
2d, That time (age ante-Columbian, but 
otherwise unknown,) has not changed 
the type of this indigenous group of 
races:— and 3d, That the "mound-build- 
ers " were probably acquainted with no 
other men but themselves. In every 
way confirming the views of the author 
of Crania Americana. 

The monuments of Mexico partake more of the decorative charac- 
ter, and we cannot but admire their ingenuity in making use of the 
most refractory materials for artistical purposes. The following three 
heads were all published by the various authors of Antiquit.es Mexi- 
eaines. Fig. 74, 199 carved of wood, is remarkable for its finish and 
elegance; fig. 75 m belongs to a statue of volcanic stone; fig. 76 m 
is of smaragdite, a green, hard, gem-like stone, which cannot, by our- 
selves, be worked otherwise than by steel or bronze, and requires the 
action of the wheel and emery. All of them are characterized by the 




MoUND-BUILDEB. 



19 ' [Whilst correcting proof, I learn, with the deepest regret, of the demise, at New York 
on the 14th Dec. 1856, of Dr. Hermann E. Ludewig ; whom I saw quite well there last Oc- 
tober. Our mutual friend Mr. Trubner will deplore, with our fellow-students, this sudden 
loss the more, as he has in press the crowning monument of Ludewig's arduous labors — the 
"Bibliography of American Aboriginal Linguistics" — the MSS. of which we looked over 
together, in London. — G. R. G.] 

198 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, p. 245, fig. 145. 

193 Antiquites Mexicaines (Relation des Trois Exped. du Cap. Dupaix, 1805-7, dessins de 
Castatteda — par Lenoir, Warden, Farcy, Baradere, St. Priest, &c, Paris, 2 vols, folio, 
1834)— pi. lxiii., fig. 121, p. 53— 2nde ExpeU 

»» Idem, pi. vi. p. 7— Ire ExpeU 

201 Idem, Supplement, pi. vii. p. 13 — 3me Expe"d. : — compare also Humboidt ( Vues des 
Cordilleras, Paris, fol. 1810, pi. 66), "Tete graved en pierre dure paries Indiens Muys- 
cas;" (Researches, tr. Williams, London, 8vo., 1814, ii. p. 205); who considers the stone a 
Bmaragdite, and the workmanship New Grenadian. 



184 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 



peculiar features of the Central American group of the Red-men, 

Fig. 74. Fig. 75. 





Mexican Musical Instrument. 



Fig 76. 



Mexican Statue. 




Mexican Gem. 



in the formation of the skull, as well as by their 
high cheek-bones. 

The drawings of the Mexican hieroglyphieal 
and pictorial MSS. are of a conventional and 
decorative character. The following group 
from the astronomical Fejervary codex, is in- 
serted to represent the state in which they por- 
tray the phases of the moon, according to Aztec 
mythology. We see first the sun aud the 
moon quarrelling [given in wood-cut 77]: the 
next group, in the original MS., shows the 
defeat of the moon, which in the third group is 
swallowed by the sun ; the fourth figure represents the triumphant 
sun; in. the fifth, the conqueror (very unsesthetically) spits the head 
of the moon out, as symbol of the first quarter. 202 

We merely figure one specimen: the subject being hardly intelli- 
gible without the colors of the original. 

Of a higher importance are the antiquities of Central America ; 
though a comparison of the different publications on the ruins of 
Palenque clearly shows, that a faithful copy of those monuments 
belongs still to the desiderata of archaeology. The idiotic head [78] 
published by Waldeck, 203 with the peculiar artificial deformation of the 

202 Kingsboeouqh, Antiquities of Mexico, iii. ; " MS. in the possession of Gabriel Fejer- 
vary"— figs. 3, 5, 6, 7. 

203 Voyage Piltoresque et ArcMologique dans la province de Yucatan, 1834-6, Paris, fol. 
1837 ; pi. xxii. p. 105 — " Relief astronomique de Palenque' " — (differently given in Del Rio, 
Description, 1822, pi. 3.) 



ART OP AMERICAN NATIONS. 
Fig. 77. 



185 




Mexican Illuminated MS. 



Fig. 78. 



Fig. 79. 





Palenque-kelief. 

skull ; and the terra-cotta idol, [179] ; m 
— both from Yucatan, — show a ten- 
dency towards decorative art ; which 
treats even the human form merely 
for ornamental purposes, and there- 
fore lays a peculiar stress on the head- 
dress, eyebrows, wrinkles, and other 
accessories, in preference to the purity 

of the principal forms. In fact we may characterize the reliefs of 
Palenque by this peculiarity, which we observe in a smaller degree 
on Mexican reliefs. 

The few monuments of Guatemala hitherto published, among those 
discovered by Squier, are of a purer taste and higher artistical cha- 
racter. This inedited colossal head [80], obligingly communicated to 
us from his well-stored portfolio, found by him at Yulpates, in 1853, sur- 



2M Idem, pi. xix. — " Idole et Vase en terre cuite.' 



186 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 



Ms;. 80. 



passes in beauty all we knew before of the art of the Ked-raee. The 

simplicity of design, the exqtiisite 
finish of execution, and the earnest 
expression of the head in question (to 
which our wood-cut does not do ade- 
quate justice), place it on an equal 
footing with the productions of any 
Japetide race. Still, the Indian charac- 
ter of the features attests sufficiently 
its indigenous origin. We owe this 
gem of American sculpture to the libe- 
rality of Mr. Squier ; whose name is 
associated with so many important re- 
searches and enterprises, that he has 
been able easily to transfer to us the 
honor of publishing the best of all 
American statuary. To it we add, as 
specimens of Central American style, 
three heads from one of his published 
works. 205 




GuATEMALIAN-IDOL. 



Fig. 81. 




Fig. 82. 




Fig. 83. 




NlCAKAGUAN. 



NlCAKAGUAN. 



NlCARAGBAN. 



We copy from the work of de Eivero and ton Tschudi, 206 the fol- 
lowing terra-cotta head [84], as a specimen of Peruvian art; and, in 
order to show the affinity of Indian art all over America, we com- 
pare it with a Mexican terra-cotta head [85]. 207 The resemblance 
in artistic treatment between both figures is most striking. 

Tschudi, with an exaggeration easily explicable in the discoverer 
and commentator of monuments formerly Unknown, compares his 
Peruvian vase to any Etruscan work of pottery ; but, even if we must 
dissent from his view in respect to the workmanship of the head pub- 

205 Nicaragua, New York, 1852 — No. 81, fromi., p. 302, "Idol from Momotombita,"— No. 
82, from ii., p. 62, "Idols at Zapatero" — No. 83, ii., p. 52, same sculptures. 

206 Anliffiiedades Peruana.?, Vienna, 4to., 1851, Atlas, lamina ix. — head on a vase. 
291 A nliquile's Mexkaines, 2nde Expedition, pi. xxiv. fig. 71, p. 20. 



ART OF AMERICAN NATIONS. 187 

lished by him, we may admit the high proficiency of Peruvian art, 
Fig. 84. Fig- 85. 





Mexican terra-cotta. 

when we behold two most exquisite 
terra-eotta heads of the British Mu- 
seum; which, according to the label 
on them, were found in the neigh- 
Peruvian Vase. borhood of Lake Titicaca. Both 

of them are here edited for the first 
time. The male head [86] compares advantageously with works 
of Egyptian or Etruscan artisanship, whilst preserving the charac- 
ter of the Indian race; and the female head [87], with its artificial 



Fig. 86. 



Fig. 87. 





Peruvian Male. 



Peruvian Female. 



deformity of the skull, gives us the highest idea of the artistical 
endowments of the Aymaras. 

These few specimens of the indigenous ante-Columbian art of 
America show sufficiently the constancy of the Indian type — as pre- 
served now in the very geographical province whence each relic has 



188 ON SOME OF THE 

been derived — during all the historical period of the JSTew "World, and 
its great difference from Chinese and Japanese works of art. Could 
we hope that the monuments of Central and South America might 
attract the attention and excite the interest of more American scholars 
than hitherto, the theory of the Mongol origin of the Red-men would 
soon be numbered among exploded hypotheses, — to be forgotten, 
like the fond illusions of Lord Kingsborough ; who succumbed pre- 
maturely, 'tis said, fortuneless in pocket and aberrated in mind, 
owing to his sincere and munificent endeavors to deduce " American 
Indians" from the falsely-supposed "lost Ten Tribes of Israel." 

IX. ON SOME OF THE UNARTISTICAL RACES. 

Count de Gobineau's publication on the Inequality of human 
races m is certainly a work sparkling with genius and originality, if 
indulging in some wild hypotheses not supported by history. By 
one of his most startling assertions he derives the aptitude for art, 
among all the nations of antiquity, from an amalgamation with Black 
races. For him, Egyptians, Greeks, Assyrians and Etruscans, are 
half-breeds, mulattoes ! "We would not notice this strange and alto- 
gether-gratuitous hypothesis, had not several other works — unscien- 
tific, but important by the intense popularity they have acquired, — 
held out the expectation that the Black races might, after all, 
turn out to be artistical, and hence bring about a new era of art. 
Sober history does not encourage such dreams, nor can the past of 
the Black races warrant them. Long as history has made mention 
of negroes, they have never had any art of their own. Their features 
are recorded by their ancient enemies, not by themselves. Egyptian 
kings who, from the earliest times of antiquity, came often into 
collision with the blacks, had them figured as defeated enemies, 
as prisoners of war, and as subject nations bringing tribute. Their 
grotesque features, so much differing from the Egyptian type, made 
them a favorite subject for sculptural supports of thrones, chairs, 
vases, &c. ; or painted under the soles of sandals, of which instances 
abound in Museums as well as in the larger works on Egypt. 

To the many examples of monumental negroes furnished in 
"Types of Mankind," we add two that are inedited, due to M. 
Prisse d'Avennes's friendship for his old Egyptian comrade, Mr. 
Gliddon. The first [fig. 88] is accompanied by the following memo- 

^ Essui sur Vlnegalite des Races Hum/lines; 8vo, vols. I, II, 1853; III, 1854; IV, 1855. 
Cf., on the same subject, Pott, Unghichheit Menschlicher Eassen hauptsachlich vom sprach- 
wissenschaf [lichen standpunkle, 1856. 



UNARTISTICAL RACES. 189 

randum : — " Tombeau de Sehampthe (Thebes), — sous Amounoph III" 

Fig. 88. 




Asiatic and African. 

(Theban Sculptures — XVIIth dynasty — 1 6th century B. C.) 

— about tbe 16th century b. c. The Fig. 89. 

second [fig. 89] is the head of one 
of two exquisitely-designed and 
colored full-length negroes, identical 
in style, supporting a "Vase peint 
(jaune, traits rouges) sur les parois 
du tombeau de A'ichesiou, pretre 
charge de l'autel et des ecritures du 
grande temple de Thebes, sous 
Eamses VII, — XX e dynastie (hypo- 
gees de Gournah)." The first cor- 
roborates that which, since Morton's 
day, has ceased to be disputed, viz : 
monumental period of Egypt, of at least three distinct types of man 
along the Nile, Egyptian, Shemitic and Nigritian ; the second (which 
point, Mr. Gliddon's and M. Prisses's long familiarity with Egypt 
render them competent authorities to assert), is identical, after 3000 




o 

Ancient Negro. 



the existence. 



during 



all the 



190 



ON SOME OF THE 



Fig. 90. 



years of time, with the ordinary class of black slaves still imported 
from the upper Nile-basin for sale in the bazaars at Cairo. 

Both these monuments belong to the XVHth and XXth dynasties, 
which carried the arms of the Pharaohs to the upper Kile and to the 
Euphrates. The other artistical nations of antiquity knew little of 
the Negro-race. They did not come before Solomon's epoch into 
immediate and constant contact with it. "We see soon after, how- 
ever, a negro in an Assyrian battle-scene of the time of S argon, at 
Khorsabad [90]. 209 He might have been exported from Memphis by 

Phoenician slave-dealers to Asia, 
where he fell fighting for his 
master against the Assyrians ; who 
did not fail to perpetuate the 
memory of such an extraordinary 
feature as a black warrior must 
have been to them. On that re- 
markable relief of the tomb of 
Darius Hystaspes, at Persepolis, 
(supra, p. ? fig. 35) we have seen 
the negro as a representative of 
Africa. The Greeks seldom drew 
blacks: still, on beautiful vases of 
the British Museum we meet with 
the well-known negro features in a 
battle-scene. [See the annexed plate IX, fig. 1]. Another such 
vase, with the representation of Hercules slaying negroes, has been 
published by Micali. 210 Etruscan potters, who, as already remarked, 
liked to draw Oriental types, moulded vases into the shape of a negro 
head, and coupled it sometimes with the head of white males or 
females. The British Museum contains several of these very cha- 
racteristic utensils. [See Plate IX, figs. 2, 3, 4]. These two Etru- 
rian vases are not older than the 4th century b. c. — probably between 
200 and 250 b. c. The medal-room of the British Museum contains, 
besides, three silver coins of Delphi, age about 400 b. c; having on 
one face the head of a negro, with the woolly hair admirably indi- 
cated ; and on the other a goat's head seen in front-view, between 
two dolphins, the usual type of Delphi. We know likewise several 
Roman cameos, which represent negroes with all the refined elegance 
of the imperial epoch [91]. Thus we possess effigies of negroes 
drawn by six different nations of antiquity: Egyptians, Assyrians, 
Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans; from about the 18th cen- 




Khoesabad-Neoro. 



209 Botta, Monument de Ninive, pi. 88. 



210 Monumenti Antichi, 






. ■ ' ■ 






PL IX. 






. 



Etruscan Vase . 

3. 



m 










M 



' *§.? £ 





Etruscan drinking -jars. 
( British Museum.) 




TJlSrARTISTlCAL RACES. 191 

tury b. c.j to the first centuries of our era, which all speak for the 
unalterable constancy of the negro type such as it 
is in our own days. We see that it was not only 
the color, but the peculiar type that struck the 
ancients ; and which the Romans, for instance, 
knew quite as minutely as any modern ethnolo- 
gists. Petronius, who lived under the emperor 
Nero, describes, in his Novel, three vagabond 
literary men who, having taken passage in a 
ship on the Mediterranean, suddenly discover that 
it belongs to a merchant on board, whom two of 

, . _ Negro Head. 

them had previously rob bed. Dreading his revenge, tp u i S zky Coll) 
one of them says : 

"Eumolpus, being a scholar, has certainly ink with him: let us therefore dye ourselves 
from top to toe, and as Ethiopian slaves we shall be at his command without fear of torture; 
for by the change of color we shall deceive our enemies." But Geiton exclaims in reply: 
"as if color atone could transform our shape ! for many things have to conspire that the lie 
might be maintained under any circumstances. Or can we fill our lips with an ugly swell- 
ing ? can we crisp our hair with an iron ? and mark our forehead with scars ? and distend 
our shanks into a curve ? and draw our heels down to the earth ? and change our beard into 
a foreign fashion? — artificial color besmears the body, but does not change it." 211 

Voltaire has somewhere wittily remarked, "the first white man 
who beheld a negro must have been greatly astonished ; but the 
reasoner who claims that the negro comes from the white man 
astonishes me a great deal more." 

Negroes, however, are not the only unartistical race. "We have 
already spoken of the Shemites among the whites, and we must add 
to them the Turanian or Turk-Tartar family of nations ; that is to say, 
the Hungarians proper, the Turks and Turkomans, the Finns, and 
some migratory tribes of southern Siberia ; none of them ever having 
produced any painter or sculptor. But not even all the Japetides are 
endowed with artistical tendencies. The Celts and Slavonians, and 
among the Teutonic races, the Scandinavians, had no national art. 
The imagery of their epics and lyrics is neither picturesque nor 
sculptural ; their buildings, pictures and statues, are characterized by 
no peculiar type, and are either the works of foreigners, or servile 
imitations of imported models. The Turks and Celts have, at least, 
a peculiar feeling for ornament, for decorative art and harmony of 
colors ; but all the other nations mentioned above have never felt 
that inward impulse which prompted even the semi-civilized Toltecan 

211 T. Petronii Arbitri, Satiricon, cap. CII: — compare the extract from Virgil in Types 
of Mankind (p. 255) ; and the quotation from Locman's Fables: (p. 246) which is but the 
Arabian or Persian dress of the same idea in iEsop's. 



192 SOME OF THE TJNARTISTICAL RACES. 

nations of America to build gigantic structures and to adom them 
with sculptures and paintings: 212 the genius of art has never smiled 
upon them. But, such being the indubitable facts of history, have 
we therefore to consider Hungarians, Celts, Shemites and Scandina- 
vians, as lower races than the ante-Columbian Aztecs of Mexico, and 
the Aymaras and Quichoas of Peru ? Are we, because some nations 
got peculiar endowments not shared by other races, to transfer these 
facts into the moral, social, and political sphere ? Are the scientific 
facts about the original "unity" or "diversity" of human races, and 
their equal or unequal mental and artistic endowments, to bear 
upon their political, social, and legal treatment ? Are the Shemites 
to be despised because they cannot understand epics and theogonies? 
and the Celts oppressed because their imagination predominates 
over their reasoning faculties ? and the Negroes enslaved because 
they never arrive at orthography or grammatical correctness ? "Will 
the Hungarians, if they could be forced to forget their language and 
to speak German; and the Poles, if they merge into the Russian 
family, become more useful to mankind than in their own languages ? 
"Will they, by changing their idiom, change their national peculiari- 
ties? Can they develope themselves under oppression and on a 
foreign basis, better than in freedom and in their national individu- 
ality ? To all these questions there is but one reply : whatever be 
their origin and endowments. They are all men; that is to say, 
beings possessing reason and conscience, responsible for their actions 
to their Creator, to mankind and to themselves, able to recognise 
truth, and to discern between right and wrong, and therefore they 
are equally entitled to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." 

212 [So true is this remark, that Waltjeck ( Yucatan, p. 34) relates how the Meridanos are 
excellent imitators and clever workmen to this day; possessing, like their ancestors, an innate 
power for sculpture and drawing. Again, in a more austral and less artistic part of America, 
the mulatto-breeds between Indians, negroes and Portuguese, have much talent for art 
(Debret, Voyage pitloresque au Bresil, III, p. 84). In spite even of Islamism, this perdu- 
rable race-instinct breaks forth in Egypt among the Theban fellahs; whose Benvenuto 
Cellinis, with the humblest instruments, manufacture "modern antiques " with sufficient 
skill to gratify that "love for Egyptian art" professed by the most fastidious Anglo-Saxon 
toiirist. An Cammoonee was, during my time at Thebes, the Sheykh of native artists in 
that line. My friend Mr. A. C. Harris, and myself, supplied him with all the small tools we 
could spare (bits of tin and glass, broken penknives, nails, old toothbrushes, &c), in hopes 
through such means, under Providence, to flood the market with antiquarian curiosities 
satisfactory to "les badauds;" and thus obviate the necessity for their chipping the monu- 
ments. (See my Appeal to the Antiquaries, London, Madden, 1841, pp. 139-45). — G. R. Or.] 



HINDOO AND CHINESE CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 193 



X. — HINDOO AND CHINESE CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 

The peninsula of the Indus and Ganges is separated from the 
mainland of Asia, by sand-deserts and ranges of inaccessible moun- 
tains. The few long and narrow passes which lead through these 
mountains, were rarely used as means of communication with the 
"West and North, for they are the home of warlike, robber-tribes, ac- 
customed to levy black-mail on the surrounding populations. The 
currents of the sea, and the directions of the winds, led the enter- 
prise of the Hindoos to the South-East, to the Malay peninsula and 
its island-world. It was thither that India sent her culture and re- 
ligion : untouched by the lively development of the classical western 
world, she remained unconnected with the current of our history. 

Scarce and faint were the legends about that great country of the 
East, which, in times of classical antiquity, reached the West by the 
way of Persia and Arabia. The mythical tradition of the triumphs 
of Bacchus, and Hercules, was all that reminded republican Greece 
of the home of spices and gems. Guided by this tradition, Alex- 
ander the Macedonian reached the frontiers of the fable-land; but 
even his adventurous spirit had to give up progress into the interior. 
The elephants, which he brought from the upper Penjaub, decided 
the battles of his successors for more than half a century after his 
death ; down to the time when the last of them went up the Capito- 
line hill, in the triumph of Curius Dentatus. This animal must have 
lived full fifty years in Macedonian harness after the war with 
Pyrrhus, being the last evidence of the unrivalled eastern conquests 
of the great Macedonian. The Roman Legions were never able to 
surmount the difficulties which barred access to Hindostan ; and a 
few merchants and ambassadors were the only western people, who, 
during the times of classical antiquity, had seen the sacred rivers of 
the peninsula. 213 The development of society, religion, government, 
and art, with the Hindoos, their institution of castes, their single and 
efficient system of self-government, their elaborate eode of law, their 
epic and dramatic poetry, and their stupendous works of architec- 
ture and sculpture, are, therefore, all of indigenous growth. They 
are certainly not derived from, and many of them are probably 
much anterior to, the Macedonian invasion ; which could not have 
left any lasting trace ; both from its short duration, and from the 

213 One of these successful travellers, Babdesanes, gives us the first description of a 
Hindoo rock-temple adorned with the sculptures of an androgynous God. See Pokphteius 
apud Stob^eum, Edog. Phys. i. p. 144. 

13 



194 HINDOO AND CHINESE 

comparatively small extent of the territory overrun by the forces of 
Alexander, and even of Seleucus and Demetrius, his Syrian and 
Bactrian successors. 

[The Punjab remained under the nominal sway of the Macedonians for about ten years, 
when this supremacy was thrown off by Sandracottus (Chandragupta), about 317 B. c. ; 
when Seleucus of Syria found it wiser to make peace with the rebel Hindoo raja, and to 
give him his daughter in marriage. The Greek kings of Bactria, from Demetrius to 
Menander and Apollodorus,— that is to say, for about one century — were likewise suzerains 
of the country on the Indus until 120 E. c. Still, they resided in Bactria ; and there is no 
trace of Greek mythology, and consequently of Greek art intimately connected with it, 
anywhere in the Punjab : on the contrary, the Bactrian kings put the representation of 
the Hindoo Shiva and of his bull Nandi on their coins struck for the Indian dominions. 
Hellenism, therefore, did not spread along the Indus, but it had to yield to Hindooism. 

After the Macedonian visit, Hindostan remained for more than a thousand years undis- 
turbed by foreigners; outliving the fierce contest between Buddhism and Brahmanism; 
civilizing by the former the Malay peninsula, and extending its moral influence to Thibet 
and China, whilst the latter converted Java about a. d. 800. Two centuries after that 
event, Shah Mahmoud, of Ghuzni, the monotheistic fanatic, called "the destroyer of 
idols," overran the north of Hindostan, burning the towns, sacking the temples, and 
breaking the images ; and settled his Pattan and Affghan followers in this fertile country. 
Ever since his time, northern Turanian conquerors found no difficulty to invade India, 
either for pillage or for conquest. Timur, Baber, and Nadir Shah, flooded the country with 
their followers, in succession ; and planted a numerous Mohammedan population, and 
Islamite dynasties, among the effeminate Hindoos. Arab merchants spread, at the same 
time, over all the coasts and islands, and converted Malay-Java (which had previously 
accepted the civilization and religion of the Vedas) to Islam ; about A. v. 1400. Still, the 
bulk of the population of the peninsula remained unshaken by the purer religion and 
social institutions of the Mohammedan conquerors. European invaders came next. More 
systemically than their Mussulman predecessors, they broke up the legal institutions and 
the traditions of indigenous administration. They swept away the old aristocracy and 
gentry of the country ; but the character of the Hindoo, and his views of God and nature, 
of law and society, remain unchanged. The population lives among, but does not intermix 
with, their former rulers, the Mussulmans ; nor with their present European lords — who 
(to use a geological simile) are in India the two newest strata of recent date ; covering the 
primary formations mechanically, but failing to transform chemically the old plutonio 
rocks of Buddhism and Brahmanism.] 

"With the Hindoos, religion, institutions, and art, are (as every- 
where amid aboriginal races) in the most intimate connection with 
the physical features of the country. Here the exuberant power of 
tropical vegetation, equally gigantic in creation and in destruction, 
subdue the energies of man. The sudden changes of temperature, — 
the tropical rains which, in the course of a few hours, swell the rivulet 
into a great stream, — the snowy mountain-peaks and mighty rivers, 
— the jungles that, with their lofty bamboo, encroach upon every 
inch of ground left uncultivated, — the strange trees, of which every 
branch becomes a new stem, — the powerful animals, from the ele- 
phant, and tiger, down to the white ant dangerous to the works of 



CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 195 

human industry by its enormous numbers, — in short, all nature 
appears in such overwhelming features, that the Hindoo gives up 
the continuous struggle with it, and finds his reward not in activity 
but in passive contemplation. His imagination soon gets the upper 
hand of his understanding; and in mythology, art, and science, takes 
an unrestrained flight into the transcendental, the monstrous and 
shapeless. 

The Hindoo adores " nature," as well its destructive as its creative 
power ; he recognises a soul in every living creature ; he believes in 
the transmigration of the soul ; and therefore throws the corpse of 
his beloved into the Ganges or into the fire, the sooner to be dissolved 
into its original atoms by the pure elements. The "Nirvana," with 
the ancient Buddhists, and the "Yogha" with the Brahmans, that 
is to say, the losing of the individuality in contemplation — a death- 
like state — being with him the noblest aim of life and the highest 
degree of sanctity, death has no terrors for him : — he flings himself 
under the wheels of the triumphal car of Shiva at Jaggernaut, and 
the widow willingly ascends the pile with the corpse of her husband. 
In the nature around him, destruction being always followed by 
immediate regeneration, he believes creation to be an uninterrupted 
cycle of one and the same life, only changing its form; and his poets 
sing, that 

" Like as men throw away old garments, and clothe themselves in new attire, 
Thus the soul leaves the body and migrates into another." 

Nature being to the Hindoo the incarnation of Godhead, he has 
a deeply reverential feeling for it ; and adorns his works of art with 
flowers in such a profusion, that man and his actions become often 
only accessories of this adornment. Still, it is not in an arbitrary 
way that he sheds his flowers on poetry and sculpture ; they always 
have a deeper, symbolical meaning. 

During the inundations, when the valley of Bengal is nearly lost 
under the waters, the petals of the Lotus flower alone swimming on 
the waves, bear evidence that the vital powers of nature have not 
been destroyed by the floods. This flower became, therefore, the 
symbol of life and of creation : it is the throne of all the Gods, and 
especially of Brahma the creator. 

The representation of Kama, the God of Love, is one of the most 
gracefully symbolical — though entirely unplastic, specimens of 
Hindoo imagination. It is a smiling child with bow and arrows, 
riding on a parrot. The bow is a bent sugar-cane adorned with 
flowers, the string is formed by a row of flying bees, and the arrow 
is a lily. Thus the Hindoo tries to represent the gentleness and in- 
constancy, the impudence and the innocence, the sweetness and the 
stings, of love, in one and the same image. 



196 HINDOO AND CHINESE 

Iii the same symbolical way, the Goddess of Beauty and Pleasure 
is the Goddess of Nature ; for, Nature is always beautiful, and the 
beautiful always natural. She is the wife of Shiva — the God of 
Destruction, and holds a flower in one hand, with a snake coiled 
around it : since pleasure is blended with danger, as life and beauty 
with death. 

I cannot enter here upon Hindoo Architecture, nor give any 
details of the wonders of the cave-temples, some of them resembling 
our churches by their nave and aisles. Space forbids me to speak of 
the colossal tanks in the south surrounded by huge buildings, and 
adorned by grand flights of steps ; or of the deep wells in the west, 
cut into the rock and surmounted by a series of galleries, to afford 
cool shade in that hot climate. I must not here enumerate their 
triumphal monuments, their columns decorated with reliefs, their 
grand arches surmounted by statues. Suffice it to mention the fact, 
that Hindoo art, through all the epochs of its history, was entirely 
indigenous and peculiar to the peninsula. The great palaces, 
temples, and tombs of the Mohammedan princes bear not the 
slightest resemblance to the native architecture, being themselves 
analogous to the mosques of Cairo, and the seraglios of Constantinople 
or of Moorish Spain. 

The character of Hindoo sculpture is similar to Hindoo poetry : 
it is eminently feminine. We find with their artists always a deli- 
cate feeling for the pleasant and graceful, as well as for the pompous 
and adorned, whilst they fail in their attempts at grandeur, — being 
either crushed by the exuberance of the decorative element, or losing 
themselves in tasteless and adventurous exaggeration. In general, 
their statues and reliefs are true in the principal forms, and soft and 
elaborate in execution. 

The sculptors are peculiarly successful in rendering the expression 
of deep contemplation, or of religious devotion. The representa- 
tions of domestic life are of the greatest sweetness ; the feminine 
passive character of the Hindoos being admirably portrayed in their 
pleasant simplicity. But when a God is to be drawn in action, and 
his power to be symbolized, the artist failed in his task : unable to 
reproduce superhuman power by idealizing the human form, he 
betook himself to unartistic and symbolical methods, as by multi- 
plying head and hands. Such symbolical personifications of Godhead 
are not at all exclusively Hindoo ; they were not unknown to the 
mythology, and earlier poets of Greece. The Giants, with their 
hundred arms ; Geryon, with three bodies ; and Polyphemus, with his 
eye on the forehead ; are subjects of art as unplastic as any creatures 
of Hindoo imagination. But the Greek sculptors avoided to represent 



CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 197 

such myths, whereas the Indian artists had often to deal with them ; 
and we must confess, that sometimes they succeeded in conciliating 
them with good taste, by giving prominence to the principal pure 
forms, and treating the monstrous appendages as decorative accesso- 
ries. Monstrosity is, on the whole, not the principal character of 
Hindoo art; hut monstrous idols excite the curiosity of the European 
visitor of India more than artistically-carved statues ; he buys them 
and carries them to the "West, on account of their very oddity. 
Hence, our public collections and curiosity-shops are swamped with 
four-handed and three-headed monsters, which ought not to be taken 
for fair specimens of Hindoo art, though they have given rise to 
the general belief that Hindostan has no art worthy to be noticed. 
We can scarcely wonder that such is the case, since the public at 
large — let us boldly avow it, — cares little for art: how then should 
it take an interest in an art founded on myths, institutions, and a 
culture which has scarcely any affinity with our own civilization ? 
The few scholars, on the other hand, who devote their time to the 
literature of Hindostan, are but too often philologists, without any 
artistic education. "We have, therefore, no publications on Hindoo 
art, such as those of Champollion, Rosellini, and Lepsius, on Egypt, 
or of Texier, Flandin, Botta, and Layard, on Persia and Assyria. 
The most important sculptures of India have not yet been copied; 
and the collections brought to the West have not been made with 
the view of giving a correct idea of the peculiar style of Hindoo art 
in its different schools and epochs. The confusion becomes still 
greater, by the fact that the old mythology of Brahmanism has, with 
a few slight alterations, remained the religion of the population down 
to our days. Idols are cast and carved continually, and their barba- 
rous style throws discredit on the better specimens of former ages. 
Our knowledge of Indian art is only fragmentary, and scarcely autho- 
rizes us to assign its proper position to every monument, either 
artistically or chronologically. Still, a few facts are sufficiently ascer- 
tained, to serve as a clue in the labyrinth of Hindoo art. 

The rock-caves, with their fantastic, exuberant, and somewhat 
exaggerated reliefs, are all of Buddhist origin. They are more chaste 
in style than the idols of the present worshippers of Shiva; and 
belong to a period of Indian history, classical for art and poetry, 
from 500 b. c, to about 300 a. d. By a strange coincidence, it is the 
same period in which Phidias and Praxiteles and Lysippus, and the 
Roman artists of Augustus and Trajan, flourished in Europe. 

Still more graceful, and more serene, are the Hindoo sculptures of 
the isle of Java, which we meet in the ruins of the temples of Boro- 
Bodo and Barandanum. The great Sir Stamford Raffles, and the 
Bombay Asiatic Society, have published a few specimens of those 



198 



HINDOO AND CHINESE 



Fig. 91. 




Buddha. 



Fig. 92. 



excellent reliefs ; which may be placed among the best productions of 

art. The following drawing of a colossal 
head of Buddha [91] 2U in a volcanic stone, 
now in the Glyptothec of Munich, may 
give an idea of the elegance and feminine 
character of those sculptures. 

The great bulk of the idols, in the col- 
lection of the British Museum, of the 
East India House, and of king Louis at 
Munich, belong to another style, which 
we call the florid style, characterized in 
its best specimens by an elaborate ele- 
gance, and often by affectation of sweet- 
ness, with a profusion of ornaments which 
encumbers the figures. Fig. 92, from a 
bronze of the British Museum, representing Lakshmi, the Goddess 
of Beauty, or Hindoo Venus, is a fair specimen 
of this style ; which belongs to the XV th and 
XVIth century of our era, and is still imitated by 
the modern artists of India. There are some rude 
figures, of an entirely different style, in some 
of the Museums of Europe ; and again others 
evidently archaic in their type : still, all of them 
are characterized by the same long pointed nose, 
the same mild eye, and the same sweetness of 
expression in the oval face,- — which form still the 
distinctive marks of the high castes of Hin- 
dostim. 

It is peculiarly interesting to see a school of 
art, so eminently feminine, apply itself to the ser- 
vice of a more martial race ; trying to represent 
the features and the court-life of the Turanian Dynasties, established 
in the XVH — XVHIth century all over the peninsula. The minia- 
ture-paintings of the time of Shah Jehan, Jehangir, Akbar, and Au- 
rengzeb, are really admirable. Whether they represent the splendor 
of a gorgeous court, or portray scenes of domestic life, there is such a 
gentle delicacy of feeling displayed in them, such a modest grace in 
the attitudes, and such a charm, especially in the female forms, that 
they are as pleasing, even to European taste, as the tales of the Ara- 
bian Mghts. And yet there is no perspective to be met with in those 
paintings ; the manner of shading the figures is unnatural ; the cos- 
tume is strange, and the grouping somewhat awkward. All this is 




Lakshmi. 



211 Othmar Frank, Ind. Mythologies and Sir Stamford Raffles, Java. 



CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 



199 



Fig. 92. 




Indian Pkince, (Pulszky Coll.) 



Fig. 93. 



eminently Hindoo ; but the features of the persons represented mark 
their foreign origin. The likeness of a prince 
of the house of Timur [92], probably Darab 
the brother of Aurengzeb, on a sardonyx- 
cameo of my collection, shows a Turanian 
cast of features. 

Four portraits of Mohammedan princes and 
statesmen in India, of the time of Aureng- 
zeb (1658-1707), — selected from a large col- 
lection of likenesses painted by contempo- 
rary Hindoo artists and now adorning my 
Indian Museum — are most remarkable for 
their excellent characterization of the differ- 
ent races of the Muslim aristocracy in India, 
during the XVHth century. Shah Jehan 
[93], the Grand Mogul of Delhi, from 1628 
to 1658, is the grandson of Akbar the Great, who was grandson to 
Babur, — founder of the dynasty of the Mo- 
guls, which gave an uninterrupted succession 
of six great rulers to India, froin 1494 to 
1707. Babur, a Turkoman from Ferghana, 
was the fourth in descent from Timur-leng ; 
and, though promiscuous polygamy is apt to 
destroy the national type of any race, we still 
behold, in this portrait of Shah Jehan, the 
old Turanian character, resembling the por- 
traits of the Parthian kings. 

KhanKhanna, the General-in-Chief of the 
Sultan of Beejapoore in the Dekhan, is a Ta- 
mul convert to Islam. [See his portrait, slightly enlarged, tinted to 
give the color of his skin, in Gliddon's " Ethnographic Tableau" (No. 
46, Hindoo,) at the end of this volume.] He represents the aboriginal 
negroid (Dravidian) race of the southern table-lands of Hindostan ; not 
to be confounded with the Brahman race of the Gangetic valley — 
which is not aboriginal, but a conquering race coming originally from 
beyond the Hindoo Kush, and closely allied to the Arians of Persia. 

Khan Khanna's Chief, Mahmood Adil Shah [94], of Beejapoore, 
claimed descent from the present Osmanlees. His ancestor, Yussuf 
Khan (1501), foiinder of the empire of Beejapoore, having been 
the son of Sultan Amurath II., of Anatolia, his round Turanian skull 
is still more characteristic than that of Shah Jehan. 
- Shah Mirza [as such he stands in the "Ethnographic Tableau," 
(No. 23, Uzbek Tatar)], the Chancellor of the kingdom of Golconda, 
is an Uzbek Tartar: and Mollah Rukha [95], his chief clerk, cannot 




Shah Jehan. 



200 



HINDOO AND CHINESE 



Fig. 94. 




Fig. 95. 




MoLLAH RtjKHA. 



Mahm6od Adil Shah. 



Fig. 96. 




MtisA Khan. 



disown his Arab descent ; the cunning She- 
mitic features are unniistakeable. MtJsa 
Khan, [96] the Affghan General-in-Chief of 
Golconda, is stamped with the peculiar cha- 
racter of his race. We see in this remark- 
able assemblage of the statesmen of Gol- 
conda, under the reign of Sultan Abd-Al- 
lahKobeha, (aboutthe middle of the XVTIth 
century,) all the elements of Mohammedan 
conquest in Hiudostan. Whoever has lived 
for a while in India will recognise in them 
the most characteristic types of Islamite 
aristocracy in the Dekhan, as it is still seen 
at the Court of the Nizam. 

The European conquest of India has not improved art among the 
natives. Trying to imitate their European lords, and struck with the 
peculiar effect of light in our drawings and paintings, the Hindoo 
painters have lost the traditions of their own art, and are lapsing 
into barbarism, wherever the contact with Europeans is great — for 
instance, in Bengal: whilst the painters of the Dekhan are somewhat 
better, though not equal to the masters who produced those miniature- 
likenesses, &c, of the greater time of the Grand Moguls. 

The preliminary remark, that we do not know sufficiently the monu- 
ments of Hindostan to characterize the different schools and epochs 
of ai't, applies with still stronger force to the peninsula east of the 
Ganges. • We know, however, the monotonous statues of Buddha, 
carved and east by the artists of Birma, well enough to see that Bir- 
mese art is clumsier than Indian ; whilst the features of the statues 
are altogether different from the Hindoo cast. As to Siam and 
Cochin-China, concerning their art, we were unable to get any facts 
whatever. These countries are visited only by a few merchants and 
missionaries, who ignore art; China is by far better known, in this 



CIVILIZATIONS AND ART. 201 

respect, than the Malay peninsula and its adjacent countries ; and 
deserves the attention of the ethnologist and philosopher, since it is 
the country where the Yellow-race has developed itself on founda- 
tions entirely peculiar and entirely indigenous". In China all the citi- 
zens are politically equal : legally there are neither patricians, nor 
slaves, nor serfs ; neither privileged nor unprotected classes in the 
country. The priests form no hierarchy, the officials are not chosen 
from among an aristocracy of birth. The Yellow-race has not been 
trained by theocracy, nor ennobled by chivalry. From the very 
earliest times, we find with the Chinese a thorough centralization; a 
well-organized bureaucracy, open to competition ; a paternal despot- 
ism, carefully superintending, regulating, repressing and suppressing 
the moral exertions of the people, and providing that nobody shoidd 
aspire to a position to which he has not become entitled by his train- 
ing, and his degrees taken at the regular examination. The emperor 
sits on the throne as the incarnation of sober common sense ; the priest 
is the servant of the state ; the church and school are police-establish- 
ments, by which the Chinese is taught blindly to respect authority, 
officials, "law and order," and to which every child is sent to learn 
practical sciences. In fact, it is the system of patriarchal, enlight- 
ened, absolutism, — so much praised by the statesmen of continental 
Europe, and many self-called "radicals " of England; the system of 
a nobility of merit and office ; of centralized functionarism ; of select 
committees and boards of inquiry ; of orders in council, and volumi- 
nous instructions for the people how to behave so as to become happy ; 
of checks and counter-checks ; of spies and denunciations ; of police 
regulations and vexations. In short, China is the country of enlight- 
enment, of equality, and of the bamboo, — paternally applied to every- 
body, from the prime minister to the humblest tiller of the ground. 
These institutions show clearly that the Chinese is endowed with 
a sober and dry imagination, that cold reason predominates, and that 
the creative power is scarcely developed in him. Accordingly, we 
find that reverie, depth of feeling, and philosophical research, are 
unknown to his literature. His artists never attempted to create an 
ideal: they are materialists and flat imitators of nature, struck 
rather by the difference than the affinity of forms ; their aim is there- 
fore always the characteristical, not the beautiful. This tendency 
leads them to exaggeration and caricature. Imitating nature in a 
servile manner, the picturesque is much more in their way than the 
sculptural ; the naked form remained altogether misunderstood by 
them. They do not see and copy the principal outlines, but the 
accidental details : the wrinkles, the hair, or the swelling of the 
muscles. As to drapery, they imitate principally its folds, and seem 
to forget that they cover a body. 



1/ 



202 HINDOO AND CHINESE CIVILIZATIONS, ETC. 



In regard to the materials employed by the Chinese artist, we 
find that he excels in casting of metals, and that no stone is so hard 
as to deter him by technical difficulties from employing it. He 
carves in wood and ivory, he chisels the marble, he cuts the gem, he 
moulds the clay, he makes the best pottery. "Wood-cutting and litho- 
graphy were indigenous in China, long before Europe knew them. 

"We may say without exaggeration, that all the materials, and the 
most important of the workmanship of the "West, are known among 
the Yellow-race; and tbat in skill and industry the son of the Celes- 
tial empire surpasses the Japetide. But how to deal artistically with 
a materia], how to combine it with, and make it subservient to, 
the idea of the work of art, this remained an unsolved problem to 
the Chinaman. Seduced by his mechanical skill, he seeks the 
highest aim of art in overcoming practical difficulties : accordingly, 



Fig. 97. 



Fig. 98. 





Chinese cameo, (Pulszky Coll.). 



Chinese God. 



he delights in treating his material in the most unsuitable way, — 
transforming ivory into lace ; or sculpturing, from hard stone, figures 
covered with a net of unbroken meshes. He startles the mind by 
the patience with which he makes artistical puzzles, instead of ex- 
citing the imagination by the composition, and creating delight 
through the purity and beauty of forms. 

The preceding two heads give an idea of the type of the YelloAV- 
race and its art. Fig. 97 is the smiling portrait of a high functionary, 
from a cameo in my collection. Fig. 98, the head of the frowning 
God of the Polar star, comes from a statuette in the British Museum. 
Both of them are intensely characteristic specimens of an art never 
influenced by foreign agencies; and scarcely showing any affinity 
with the sculptures, either of our classical western, or of the conter- 
minous Hindoo civilization. 

F. P. 



CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 203 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RACES OF MEN. 

BY J. AITKEN MEIGS, H.D, 
LIBRARIAN OF THE ACADEMY OF NATOEAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, ETC. 



Messrs. Nott and Gliddon: 

My Dear Sirs. — In answer to your very polite request of June 14th, that I should 
furnish you with a brief statement of the progress and present condition of Human 
Cranioscopy, and the intimate and important relations which it bears to the great problems 
of Ethnology, I send you the accompanying sketch, which you must receive mm grano 
salts, inasmuch as it has been drawn up during the hot and oppressive nights of mid- 
summer, and amidst the exacting interruptions necessarily attendant upon the practice 
of my profession. 

Having, as you are aware, devoted some portion of my leisure time, during the summer 
of 1855, to arranging and classifying the magnificent collection of the late Dr. Morton, 
preparatory to issuing a fourth edition of the Catalogue (the MS. of which was presented 
to the Academy of Natural Sciences in December last), I have thought proper to embody 
in this sketch some notice of the additions and changes which this Collection has under- 
gone since the demise of its illustrious founder. In attempting to set forth, in a general 
way, the cranial characters which differentiate the Races of Men, I have indicated the 
true value, not only of the Collection itself, but of the labors of Dr. M. also. For by 
determining those constant differences which constitute typical forms of crania, we esta- 
blish the fundamental, anatomical facts or principles upon which a true classification of the 
human family must be erected. 

In the treatment of my subject, you will observe that I have confined myself chiefly to a 
simple statement of facts, carefully and designedly abstaining from the expression of any 
opinion upon the prematurely, and perhaps, in the present state of our knowledge, unwisely 
mooted questions of the origin and primitive affiliations of man. Not a little study and 
reflection incline me to the belief that long years of severe and earnest research are yet 
necessary before we can pronounce authoritatively upon these ultimate and perplexing 
problems of Ethnology. 

Very truly yours, &c, 
Philad., December., 1856. J. AITKEN MEIGS. 



204 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



" How much may the anatomist see in the mere skull of man ! How much 
more the physiognomist ! And how much the most the anatomist, who is a 
physiognomist ! I blush when I think how much I ought to know, and of 
how much I am ignorant, while writing on a part of the body of man which 
is so superior to all that science- has yet discovered — to all belief, to all 
conception ! 

"I consider the system of the bones as the great outline of man, and the 
skull as the principal part of that system." 

Lavatek, Essays on Physiognomy. 

A comprehensive and carefully conducted inquiry into the cranial 
characteristics of the races of men, constitutes a subject as unlimited 
in its extent and variety, as it is important in its results. Such an 
inquiry is essentially the zoological consideration of man, or, in 
other words, the consideration of man as a member of the great 
animal series, and the consequent application to him of those funda- 
mental laws which concern the subordination of parts, and the esta- 
blishment and correlation of specific forms. 

The first step in this inquiry, is the determination of those dif- 
ferences by which we are enabled to discriminate between the 
human cranium and that of the lower orders of animals. Lawrence 
long ago indicated, in his valuable Lectures, the importance of this 
procedure. "As the monkey-race," says he, "approach the nearest 
to man in structure and actions, and their forms are so much like 
the human, as to have procured for them the epithet, anthropo- 
morphous, we must compare them to man, in order to find out the 
specific characters of the latter; and we must institute this com- 
parison particularly with those called orang-outangs." 1 Such a 
comparison between the cranium of a negro and that of a gorilla, 
has been admirably drawn by Prof. Owen. 2 The second step leads 
to a recognition of the points of difference and resemblance between 
the crania of the various groups composing the human family. Now 
in elucidating these resemblances and differences, we lay the founda- 
tion of anthropology, or man zoologically considered. But our 
cranioscopy, to be properly initiative or introductory to anthro- 
pology, must be comparative, — not humanly comparative only, but 
zoologically. In other words, as naturalists — using that term in 
its most comprehensive sense — we must recognize the commence- 

1 Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of 
Man. By Wm. Lawrence, F.R.S. London, 1848, p. 88. 

2 Descriptive Catalogue of the Osteological Series contained in the Museum of the Royal 
College of Surgeons. II. 785. 1853. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 205 

ment of cranioscopy in the lower series. If we first compare the 
crania of the lowest types of man with the most anthropoid of those 
of the monkey group, and then carefully observe the nature of the 
relation between the so-called superior and inferior forms of each 
group, respectively, and finally compare these relations together, we 
commence our studies properly. For in so doing, we in reality 
study the extent, nature, and significance of the wide gap which 
appears effectually to separate man from the brute creation. I say, 
appears — and I say it advisedly, inasmuch as in nature's plan there 
may be no gap at all; the intervening forms may have become 
extinct, they may, unknown to us, be living in some unexplored 
regions of the earth ; or they may yet appear, at some future period, 
to substantiate that harmonious and successional unity which seems 
to underlie the entire system of the universe. 

In the accompanying table will be found a series of figures repre- 
senting the juvenile, or immature, and adult skulls of the anthropo- 
morphous monkeys, the adult or permanent forms of the lower types 
both of men and monkeys, and, lastly, a well-known representation 
of the highest form of the "human head divine," — all arranged in 
conformity with what appears to be the indication of nature. Such 
an arrangement shows us, at a glauce, that among the different tribes 
of monkeys, as among the various races of men, there are numerous 
types or forms of skull ; that for each of these natural groups, there 
is a gradation of cranial forms ; that the greatest resemblances be- 
tween the two groups — ■ resemblances indicating the existence of a 
transitionary or connecting link as a part of nature's plan — are to be 
sought for in or between the lower types of each, and not between 
the lowest man and highest monkey, as is generally supposed ; that 
the undeveloped crania of the Chimpanzee, Orang, and other higher 
types of monkeys, more closely resemble the human form than when 
fully evolved ; that for each of the lower human types of skull, there 
appears to exist among the monkeys a rude representative, which 
seems remotely and imperfectly to anticipate the typical idea of the 
former, and to bear to it a certain ill-defined relation ; and, lastly, 
that the best formed human skull stands immensely removed from 
the most perfectly elaborated monkey cranium. 

From the comparative methods above referred to, we learn that 
the human head differs from that of the brute creation in many im- 
portant respects, — such as the proportion between the size and areas 
of the cranium and face, the relative situation of the face, the direc- 
tion and prominence of the maxilla;, the position and direction of the 
occipital foramen, the proportion of the facial to the cranial half of 
the occipito-mental diameter, in the absence of the os inter-maxillare, 



206 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 









OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



207 






in the number, situation, and di- 
rection of the teeth, &c. These are 
a few of the differential elements 
which separate man from the quad- 
rumana, and the various genera 
and species of the latter from each 
other. But the chief value of these 
osteological differentia lies in their 
perfect applicability to man, and 
the facility with which they enable 
us to distinguish between the vari- 
ous human types. Thus, in the 
best developed and most intellec- 
tual races, the supra-orbital ridge 
is smooth, well carved, and not 
much developed; as we descend 
towards the lower types, it becomes 
more and more marked, until, in 
the African and Australian heads, 
it has attained its maximum de- 
velopment. In the Orang, this 
feature begins to assume a greater 
importance, while in the Chimpan- 
zee, its enormous size renders it a 
characteristic mark. Here, then, 
is the evidence, to some extent, of 
gradation, in a seemingly exclusive 
ethnographic mark, whose signifi- 
cance is elucidated by a resort to 
anthropology. Again, it is curious 
to observe how certain adult animal 
characters appear in man during 
the foetal period only. Thus, in 
some mammals, as the Rodentia 
and Marsupialia, we find, as a per- 
manent feature, an inter-parietal, 
bone. In man, the occipital bone 
consists, at birth, of four parts, 
which are not consolidated until 
about the fifth or sixth year. 
Each of these parts is developed 
from distinct ossific centres. For 
the posterior or proral portion, an- 



208 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

atomists generally recognise four such centres, arranged in pairs, the 
two lower uniting first, and afterwards the two upper, so that, be* 
tween this superior and inferior portion, a line of demarcation 
— sutura prorse — remains until the time of birth. According to 
Meckel, the superior portion is developed from two bony puneta. 
In consequence of this distinct ossification, the superior angle of 
the os occipitis continues as a separate piece during intra-uterine 
life, as was long ago noticed and described by Gerard Blasius, 
in his work (Anatonie Contractu) published at Amsterdam, in 1666. 
The interest attached to this embryonic feature arises from its re- 
markable persistence as a triangular inter-parietal or supra-occipital 
bone, in juvenile Peruvian skulls, as first pointed out by Dr. P. Bel- 
lamy, in a paper read before the Naturalists' Society of Devon and 
Cornwall, and afterwards by Dr. Tschtjdi, in a paper on the ancient 
Peruvians. 3 Dr. Minchin, in a recent highly philosophical article, 
entitled, Contributions to Craniology, 4 while contending for the central 
or vertical origin of the bi-parietal bones, is disposed to question the 
existence of this supernumerary bone as an ordinary normal condi- 
tion of foetal life. However, his argument on this special point is by 
no means conclusive. The os inter-maxillare, found in some of the 
Quadrumana as a permanent character, has also been demonstrated 
as a transitional mark in the human embryo. 5 Did my space permit, 
other examples might be given, illustrative of the value of human 
embryology as a guide in the study of the specific and generic cha- 
racters of the animal kingdom. 

The want of information, such as above set forth, led Monboddo 
and Rousseau, men of undoubted learning, to speak of the relation- 
ship of the genus Homo to the Quadrumana in terms contradictory 
to all correct anatomy and physiology. " II est bien demontre," says 
Rousseau, " que le Singe n'est pas une variety de l'Homme, non 
seulement parcequ'il est prive de la faculte de parler, mais, surtout, 
parcequ'on est sur que son espece n'a point la faculte de se perfec- 
tionner, qui est le caractere specifique de l'espece humaine; — expe- 
riences qui ne paroissent pas avoir €t& faites, sur le Pongos et 
l'Ourang-Outang, avec assez de soin, pour en tirer la menie conclu- 
sion." 6 Monboddo, less cautious, expressed his belief in the specific 
identity of man and the orang. Even White, not properly under- 
standing Nature's method in that " Gradation" upon which he wrote, 

3 Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1844, p. 252. 

4 Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, Not., 1856. 

6 See some remarks on the inter-maxillary bone, by Prof. Leidy, in Quain and Sharpey's 
Human Anatomy, 1st Amer. Edit., vol. 1, p. 143. 
6 Discours sur les Causes, &c, note 10. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 209 

speaks of the orang as having the person, manner, and actions of 
man. 7 

Still higher and more complex propositions engage the attention 
of the cranioscopist. What is the nature of the skull as a whole, 
and what is the nature respectively of its different parts? Why 
should it be composed of 22 hones, and no more ? What is the 
meaning of the sutures, and what their relation to individual and 
race forms of the skull ? What are the relations of the cranium to 
the bony skeleton on the one hand, and to the delicate organ of 
thought and sensation, which it encloses, on the other ? What are 
the laws of its development ? When has it obtained its full growth, 
and what are the indications of this fact ? Is this period the same 
in all the varieties of men ? Does the cranium give form to the 
brain, or, vice-versa, does the latter mould the former to itself? 
What are the relations of cranial form to mental and moral mani- 
festations, — " to capability of civilization, and actual progress in arts, 
sciences, literature, government, &c. ?" Is there one, or are there many 
primitive cranial types or forms ? If one, how have originated the 
distinctions which we now perceive ? If many, what are the distin- 
guishing peculiarities of the primitive forms ? Are these peculiari- 
ties primordial and constant, or can they be adequately accounted 
for by the action of external causes ? To what extent is the form of 
the cranium modified by climatic conditions, habits of life, age, sex, 
intermarriage, &e. ? Does intellectual cultivation modify the form 
of the skull ? Can acquired modifications of cranial form be trans- 
mitted hereditarily ? If so, what are the laws of this transmission ? 
Is there for skull-forms, as Flourens has said of races, " an art of 
preserving their purity, of modifying them, altering and producing 
new ones ?" 8 Are the few leading cranial types which we at present 
encounter in the human family, primary results of certain cosmo- 
gonie causes, which ceased to act the moment after their formation ; 
or, are they the secondary, or even tertiary and quaternary results, 
as Count de Gobineau supposes, of the intermixture of races, occur- 
ring at periods antedating all historical and monumental record ? 9 

Such are a few of the leading questions which arise from a thought- 
ful examination of the human cranium, — questions which I indicate 
here, rather as exemplifying the scope and philosophical character of 
cranioscopy, than with the view of answering them in detail. In- 

' An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in different Animals and Vegetables, 
&c. By Chas. White. London, 1799. 

8 De l'lnstinct et de l'Intelligence des Animaux, par P. Flourens : 3me Edit., Paris, 1851, 
p. 121. 

9 Essai sur 1'Inegalitg des Races Humaines, par M. A. de Gobineau : Paris, 1853, vol. 1, 
p. 245. 

14 



210 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

deed, such an attempt, in the present state of our knowledge, would 
be premature, and therefore liable to the errors inseparable from 
hasty examinations. Some of these questions, it is true, have al- 
ready been answered ; some are being solved even now ; while others, 
such as the law of divergent forms, are professedly among the most 
obscure problems in the whole range of scientific inquiry. Neverthe- 
less, I call the attention of the reader to a brief and general analysis 
of some of the most prominent of these subjects, as the best method 
of showing the importance of this newest of the sciences, its nature 
and power, the methods of procedure adopted, and the results which 
may reasonably be expected to flow from its cultivation. And I 
do this designedly, for I have been actuated, in contributing this 
paper to a popular scientific work, with the desire of presenting a 
novel, and with me, favorite study, in its proper light before the peo- 
ple, hoping thereby to arrest the progress of certain ill-founded sus- 
picions, which, in some quarters, have sprung up as the result of a 
fear that the inquiry was detrimental, instead of advantageous, to the 
best interests of man. 

Cranioscopy is a new science. Dating from the time of Blumen- 
bach, with whom it fairly begins, it is scarcely 70 years old ; and its 
cultivators, even at the present moment, number but a few names. 
Indeed, so little attention has been paid, in general, to the Natural 
History of Man, that we find Lawrence, so late as the summer of 
1818, expressing himself in the following words : 10 "Accurate, beau- 
tiful, and expensive engravings have been executed of most objects 
in natural history, of insects, birds, plants : splendid and costly pub- 
lications have been devoted to small and apparently insignificant de- 
partments of this science ; yet the different races of man have hardly, 
in any instance, been attentively investigated, described, or compared 
together: no one has approximated and surveyed in conjunction 
their structure and powers : no attempt has been made to delineate 
them, I will not say on a large and comprehensive, but not even on 
a small and contracted scale ; nobody has ever thought it worth while 
to bestow on a faithful delineation of the several varieties of man 
one-tenth of the labor and expense which have been lavished again 
and again on birds of paradise, pigeons, parrots, humming-birds, 
beetles, spiders, and many other such objects. Even intelligent and 
scientific travellers have too often thrown away on dress, arms, orna- 
ments,- utensils, buildings, landscapes, and obscure antiquities, the 
utmost luxury of engraving and embellishment, neglecting entirely 
the being, without reference to whom, none of these objects possess 
either value or interest. In many very expensive works, one is dis- 

io Op. eit., p. 84. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 211 

appointed at meetiug, in long succession, with prints of costumes — 
summer dresses and winter dresses, court and common dresses — the 
wearer, in the meantime, being entirely lost sight of. The immortal 
historian of nature seems to have alluded to this strange neglect in 
observing, ' quelqu' interet que nous ayons a nous connaitre nous 
memes, je ne sais si nous ne connaissons pas mieus tout ce qui n'est 
pas nous.' 11 Indeed, whether we investigate the physical or the moral 
nature of man, we recognize at every step the limited extent of our 
knowledge, and are obliged to confess that ignorance which a Rous- 
seau and a Buffon have not been ashamed to avow." — "The most 
useful, and the least successfully cultivated of all knowledge, is that 
of man ; and the description on the temple of Delphi (rvwdi tfeaurov) 
contained a more important and difficult precept than all the books 
of the moralists." 12 Twelve years after this was written, we behold 
Dr. Morton compelled to conclude a lecture upon " The different 
Forms of the Skull as exhibited in the Five Races of Men," without 
being able to present to his audience either a Mongolian or a Malay 
skull. 13 Our surprise at this will be somewhat lessened, however, 
when we call to mind the fact that, at this time, the celebrated Blu- 
menbachian collection contained but 65 skulls. And now, in 1856, 
we are again reminded, by a British ethnographer, of the difficulties 
which beset the study of cranioscopical science. " It is truly surpri- 
sing," says Davis, "how great the destruction of human crania, 
all-important for our design, has been, and how rapidly all such 
genuine remains of the Britons, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons are now 
escaping from the grasp of science. The progressive enclosure of 
our wild tracts, the extension of cultivation, and the introduction of 
a more perfect agriculture, have in modern times destroyed multi- 
tudes of the oldest sepulchres, and all that they contained. And it 
is unfortunate that the researches of antiquaries, who have opened 
barrows and excavated cemeteries with inquiring eyes, have been 
almost equally fatal to the cranial remains of their occupants. Arms, 
personal ornaments, and other relics deposited with the dead, have 
generally engrossed attention, to the exclusion of the tender and 
fragile bones of their possessors." 14 Notwithstanding these obstacles, 

11 Buffon, "De la Nature de l'Homnie," Histoire Naturelle Ge'ne'rale et Particuliere. Paris, 
1749, T. 2, p. 429. 

12 Discours sur l'lnegalite" ; Preface. 

13 Letter to J. R. Bartlett, Esq., Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. 
ii., New York, 1848, p. 217. 

14 Crania Britannica. Delineations and Descriptions of the Skulls of the Early Inhabitants 
of the British Islands ; together with Notices of their other Remains. By J. Barnard Davis, 
M. R. C. S., F. S. A., etc., and John Thurnam, M. D., F. S. A., &c. London, 1856, Decade 
I., p. 2. Judging from the first decade, this admirable work promises, when completed, to 



212 THE CRANIAL C H A R A C T E E I S T I C S 

however, it is cheering to know that the labors of Blumenbach, 
Morton, Prichard, Lawrence, Retzius, ISTilsson, and others, have 
at length resulted in the establishment of a Thesaurus Uthnologieus, 
consisting of a vast number of well-ascertained facts waiting the 
application of more efficient methods of generalization. 

Again, the novelty of the science, the startling character of some 
of its propositions, and the unfortunate errors which have been foisted 
upon it by certain hasty theorizers, whose speculative zeal has outrun 
the slow accumulation of facts ; and its apparent relation to a dubious 
science, ls have all conspired to bring the cranioscopical department of 
Human Natural History into disrepute. But its political importance 
alone outweighs these errors ; for amidst its manifold details we must 
seek for the reasons of the diversities so evident in the human family ; 
the extent, permanence, and meaning of these diversities ; and the 
best means of harmonizing the discrepancies in modes of thought 
and action flowing therefrom. It endeavors to elucidate the societary 
condition of man by appealing to a correct anatomy and physiology, 
and the zoological laws based upon these. Not a few ethnologists 
have indicated its importance in their writings. Thus Courtet de 
Lisle 16 attempts — and I think successfully — to show that Political 
Economy is necessarily founded upon our science. Knox" and 
Ellis 18 dwell with emphasis upon its political significance, while the 
Count de Gobineatj 19 seeks in it the solution of those sudden and 
apparently inexplicable changes which have given to European his- 
tory so enigmatical a character. A moment's reflection will show 
that the connection here attempted to be established is a perfectly 
logical one. If the acts of an individual are to a considerable extent 

constitute the most valuable contribution to Ethnography that has appeared since the pub- 
lication of the Crania iEgyptiaca of Morton. The text betrays evidence of much thought, 
extensive research, and critical observation of a high character, while the numerous 
lithographic representations of ancient British and Roman Crania are executed in the finest 
style of art. 

15 The fundamental propositions of Phrenology are equally true of Cranioscopy. Of the 
truth of these propositions, there can be little doubt. Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, 
and Pathology, all tend to substantiate the multiple character of the structure and function 
of the brain, and demonstrate that mind is not only connected with brain, but connected 
with a particular portion of it. Little doubt can be entertained of the general adaptation 
of the skull to its contents. Thus mind, brain, and cranium are connected. Thus far 
science confirms Phrenology; but in the "mapping-out details," to which the followers of 
Gall and Spurzheim have so unwarrantably resorted, Phrenology is no longer a science. 

16 La Science Politique fondle sur la Science de l'Homme, &c, par V. Courtet de Lisle. 
Paris, 1838. 

17 The Races of Men: a Fragment, by Robert Knox, M.D., &c. Amer. Edit., Philada., 
1850. 

18 Irish Ethnology, Socially and Politically Considered, by Geo. Ellis. Dublin, 1852. 
" Op. cit. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 213 

the outward expressions, or functional manifestations of the organ- 
ism, and if the acts of a society are the sum total of the individual 
acts of its members, then it necessarily follows, that the civil history 
of a nation in great measure arises from, and is dependent upon, the 
natural or physical characters of its citizens. Thus, then, paradoxical 
as it may seem, the polygamy of the Orient, the cannibalism of the 
South Sea Islands, the differences between the civilizations of Europe 
and Asia, between the artistic powers of the negro and the " Cauca- 
sian," are so many indications of the philosophical value of human 
osteology. 

But to the American citizen, especially, does our science recom- 
mend itself as one worthy of all consideration, since upon American 
soil, representatives from nearly all parts of the earth have been 
gathering together during the last two hundred years. The peaceful 
and semi-civilized Toltecan man — once the proud master of our con- 
tinent, which he busily dotted with forts and mounds, with mighty 
monuments and great cities — has just been swept away by the unre- 
lenting hand of the longer-headed but less intellectual nomade of the 
North — the red Indian — who, in his turn, is suffering annihilation in 
the presence of, and by contact with the yet larger-headed Teuton of 
Europe. "While the lozenge-faced Eskimo of our Polar coastline is 
mysteriously fading away, under the action of influences tending to 
render the extreme north an uninhabited waste, 20 from the old world 
a steady stream of human life, a heterogeneous exodus of various 
races of men, is inundating our soil, and threatening to change our 
entire political aspect by the introduction of novel physical and 
intellectual elements. The Scandinavian, the German, the Sclavo- 
nian, and the Kelt of Southern Europe, the follower of Mahomet, and 
the disciple of Confucius, the aboriginal Red Man, and the unhappy 
children of Africa, have in congress assembled in the New World — 
not brought together fortuitously, for chance has nothing to do with 
the history and destiny of nations — but impelled by laws of humani- 
tarian progress and change, as yet improperly understood. All these 
have assembled to work out the problem of human destiny on the 
one hand, and the stability of our boasted republic on the other. 
Let the American reader steadily contemplate this picture, and study 
its details ; let him give ear to some of the momentous questions 
which are anxiously disturbing the peace and quietness of this con- 
gress, — the ultimate disposition, for example, of the prognathous 
man, imported by our English forefathers, and left with us, a fearful 
element of discord, — the operations of the " manifest destiny princi- 

» See The Natural History of the Human Species, &o., By Lieut. Col. Chas. Hamilton 
Smith; edited by S. Kneeland, Jr., M. D. Boston, 1851, p. 294. 



214 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

pie" in the ISTicarauguan Republic, &c. Furthermore, let him con- 
template the members of our National Legislature daily debating 
questions involving the antipathies and affiliations of the races of 
men, without the slightest notion of their true ethnological import ; 
let him not be unmindful, also, of the various political parties and 
secret associations which have suddenly sprung up in our midst, and 
are based upon ethnical peculiarities ; let him behold the Chinaman 
celebrating his polytheistic worship in the heart of a Christian com- 
munity, and within the shadow of a Christian temple ; while upon 
Beaver Island, and about Salt Lake, another institution of the East, 
polygamy, flourishes in rank luxuriance. Let the American reader, 
I say, contemplate all this, and in his anxiety to know the causes of 
these strange phenomena, the labors of the cranioscopist, in conjunc- 
tion with those of the philosophical historian will assume their full 
importance. 

From a long and comprehensive study of history, a European 
thinker, 1 of profound erudition, has at length, in the diversified 
ethnographic peculiarities of the different races of men, detected and 
formuled the cause of the apparently mysterious revolutions and 
final decadence of once-flourishing nations. — "Toute agglomeration 
humaine, meme j> r otegee par la complication la plus ingenieuse de 
liens soeiaux, contracte, au jour meme ou elle se forme, et cache 
parmi les elements de sa vie, le principe d'une mort inevitable. . . . 
Oui, reellement c'est dans le sein meme d'un corps social qu'existe 
la cause de sa dissolution ; mais, quelle est cette cause ? — La degene- 
ration, fut-il replique ; les nations meurent lorsqu'elles sont composees 

d'elements digeneres Je pense done que le mot degenere, 

s'appliquant a un peuple, doit signifier, et signifie que ce peuple n'a 
plus la valeur intrinseque qu'autrefois il possedait, paree qu'il n'a 
plus dans ses veines le meme sang dont des alliages successifs ont 
graduellement modifie la valeur; autrement dit, qu'avec le meme 
nom, il n'a pas conserve la meme race que ses fondateurs ; enfin, que 
l'homme de la decadence, celui qu'on appelle l'homme degenere, est 
un produit different, au point de vue ethnique, du heros des grandes 
epoques. Je veux bien qu'il possede quelque chose de son essence ; 

mais, plus il degenere, plus ce quelque chose s'attenue Il 

mourra definitivement, et sa civilisation avec lui, le jour oil l'element 
ethnique primordial se trouvera tenement sub-divise et noye dans des 
apports de races etrangeres, que la virtualite de cet element n'exer- 
cera plus desormais d'action suffisante." 

Undoubtedly, the Science of Man commences with Buffon and 
Linn^ius — Buftbn first in merit, though second in the order of time. 

2 1 De Gobineau, op. cit., pp. 3, 38, 39, 40. 



OF THE RACES OF -MEN. 215 

By the writers anterior to their day, but little was done for human 
physical history. Among the classical authors, Thucydides, the type 
of the Grecian historians, treated of man in his moral and political 
aspects only. The nearest approximation to a physical history is 
contained in his sketch of the manners and migrations of the early 
Greeks, and in his history of the Greek colonization of Sicily. The 
books of Herodotus have more of an ethnographic character, in 
consequence of the account which he gives of the physical appear- 
ance of certain nations, whose history he records. Hippocrates theo- 
rizes upon the influence of external conditions upon man. Aristotle 
and Plato also distantly allude to man in his zoological character. 
From the Romans we derive some accounts of the people of North 
Africa, of the Jews and ancient Germans, and of the tribes of Gaul 
and Britain. Of these, as Latham has appropriately observed, "the 
Germania of Tacitus is the nearest approach to proper ethnology 
that antiquity has supplied." 

Linnaeus and Buffon, in their valuation of external characters — 
such as color of skin, hair, &c, — bestowed no attention upon the 
osseous frame-work. Of cranial tests, and of bony characters in 
general, they knew nothing, or, knowing, considered them of no 
value. Hence, although Linjletjs, in his Systema Naturse, brought 
together the genera Homo and Simia, under the general title Antliro- 
pomorpha, and although Buffon, filled with the importance of human 
Natural History, devoted a long chapter to the varieties of the human 
species, yet the first truly philosophical and practical recognition of 
the zoological relations of man appears in the anthropological intro- 
duction with which the illustrious Cuvier commences his far-famed 
Regne Animal. 

By the publication of his Decades Craniorum — commenced in 1790, 
and completed in 1828 — Blumenbach early occupied the field of the 
comparative cranioscopy of the Races of Men. In consequence of 
the application of the zoological method of inquiry to the elucidation 
of human natural history, that work at once gave a decided impulse 
to the science of Ethnography, and for a long time exerted a consi- 
derable influence on the views of subsequent writers upon this and 
kindred subjects. Unable to satisfy the constantly increasing de- 
mands of the present day, its importance has sensibly diminished. 
The general brevity of the descriptions, the want of both absolute 
and relative measurements, and the defective three-quarter and other 
oblique views of many of the skulls, render it highly unsatisfactory 
to the practical cranioscopist. Moreover, the number of crania 
(sixty-five) possessed by Blumenbach was too small, not only to esta- 
blish the characteristics of the central or standard cranial type of 



216 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

each of the many distinct groups composing the human family, but 
was also found to be inadequate to demonstrate the extent, relatione, 
and true value of the naturally divergent forms of each group. Prior 
to the time of Blumenbach, however, Daubenton had already written 
the first chapter in cranial osteology, by his observations on the basis 
cranii, and the variations in the position of the foramen magnum 
occipitis. 22 For the second chapter — the study of the cranium in 
profile — we are indebted to Camper, who identified his name with the 
facial angle. 23 Scemmering applied the occipito-frontal arch, the 
horizontal periphery, and longitudinal and transverse diameters of 
the cranium to demonstrate the differences between the heads of 
Europeans and Negroes. 24 During the publication of the Decades, 
the celebrated Jno. Hunter, of London, began his scientifico-medical 
career with an inaugural thesis upon the subjects under considera- 
tion. 25 Nineteen years after the publication of the pentad, by which 
the sis decades of Blumenbach were completed, Morton's great and 
original work, the Crania Americana, was given to the world. 26 From 
that time, human cranioscopy asserted its claims to scientific consi- 
deration, and gave a decided impetus to anthropology. In 1844, 
from the same pen, apeared the Crania JEgyptiaca™ which Prichard 
hailed as a most interesting and really important addition to our 
knowledge of the physical character of the ancient Egyptians. 28 

The only elaborate English contribution to cranioscopy, is the 
Crania Britannica of Messrs. Davis & Thurnam, the first decade of 
which has but recently been issued from the British press. To the 
sterling merits of this work allusion has already been made. Of the 
scientific labors of those eminent Scandinavian craniologists and 
antiquarians, Professors Retzius of Stockholm, Mlsson of Lund, and 
Eschricht of Copenhagen, I need not here speak. To the ethno- 
graphic student the writings of these savants have been long and 
favorably known. The French have done but little in this particu- 

22 See Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1764. Sur la Difference du Grand 
Trou occipital dans V Homme et dans les autres Animaux. 

23 Dissertation snr les Varie'tfe Naturelles, &c, ouvrage posthume de M. P. Camper. Paris, 
1792. 

24 Ueber die Korperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Europaer. Frankfurt und 
Mainz, 1785, p. 50, et seq. 

25 Disputatio Inauguralis qusedam de Hominum Varietatibus et harum cansis exponens, 
&c. Johannes Hunter, Edinburgi, 1775. 

26 Crania Americana ; or a Comparative View of the Skulls of various Aboriginal Nations 
of North and South America, &c. By Samuel George Morton, M. D. Philada., 1839. 

21 Crania iEgyptiaca ; or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, &c. By Samuel George 
Morton, M. D. Philada., 1844. Published originally in the Transactions of the Amer. 
Philosoph. Society, vol. IX. 

28 Nat. Hist, of Man, 3d edit. p. 570. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 217 

lar department of science. The names of Serres, Foville, 20 Gosse, 30 
Dunioutier, Blanchard, 31 and others, however, are hefore the public 
in this connection. As far as I have been able to ascertain, cra- 
niology has received more attention at the hands of the Germans. 
Prof. Engel, of Prague, has given us a philosophical dissertation 
upon cranial forms, the mensuration of the skull, &c. 32 To Prof. 
Zeune, we are indebted for a classification of skulls. 33 Dr. C. G. 
Carus, in an elementary work on Cranioscopy, indicates and developes 
to some extent the principles which should guide us in our examina- 
tion of the different cranial formations, in their relation to psychical 
conditions. 34 In a subsequent work, he comments upon and explains 
these principles more fully. 35 Passing over the names of Bidder, 36 
Bruch, 37 Spo3ndli, 38 Kblliker, 38 A 7 irchow, 40 Lucffi,' n Fitzinger 42 and others, 
I must conclude this hasty enumeration by calling attention to the 
laborious and masterly work of Prof. Huschke, of Jena, — the result, 
as we are informed in the preface, of nine years study and reflection. 43 
With the exception of an admirable paper on the Admeasurements 
of Crania of the principal groups of Indians of the United States, con- 
tributed by Mr. J. S. Philips to the Second Part of Schoolcraft's 
work on the Aboriginal Races of America, 44 nothing has been done 
for craniology on this side of the Atlantic since the demise of Dr. 
Morton. Indeed, the labors of Morton embody not only all that 

26 Deformation du Criine resultant de la ra^thode la plus generale de couvrir la Tete des 
Enfants, 1834. Also, Traits complet de l'Anatomie, de la Physiologie et de la Pathologie 
du Systeme Nerveux, 1844. 

30 Essai sur les Deformations artificielles du Crane. Paris, 1855. 

31 Voyage au Pole Sud et dans l'0c6anie, &c, Anthropologic, Atlas par Dr. Dumoutier; 
texte par Emile Blanchard. Paris, 1854. 

32 Untersuchungen uber Schadelformen. Von Dr. Joseph Engel, Prof., Prag, 1851. 

33 Uber Sch'adelbildung zur festern Begriindung der Menschenrassen. Von Dr. A. Zeune. 
Berlin, 1846. 

34 Grundziige einer neuen und wissenschaftlich begriindeten cranioscopie (Sch'adelehre) 
von Dr. C. G. Carus. Stuttgart, 1841. 

35 Atlas der Cranioscopie oder Abbildungen der Schsedel- und Antlitzformen Beruehnrter 
oder sonst merkwuerdiger Personen von Dr. C. G. Cams. Leipzig, 1843. 

36 De Cranii Conformatione. Dorpat, 1847. 

37 Beitrage zur Entwickelung des Knochensystems. 

38 Ueber den Primordialschadel. Zurich, 1846. 

39 Tbeorie des Primordialschadels. (Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaftliche Zoologie. 2 Bd.) 

40 Ueber den Cretinismus, namentlich in Franken und iiber pathologische Schadelformen. 
(Verhaudl. der physik. — medic. Gesellschaft in Wiirzburg, 1852, 2 Bd.) 

a De facie humana, Heidelbergse, 1812. — De Symmetria et Asymmetria organorum anim- 
alitatis, imprimis cranii, Marburgi, 1839. — Schadel abnormer Form in Geometrischen Abbil- 
dungen, von Dr. J. C. G. Lucse. Frank, am Main, 1855. 

42 Uber die Schadel der Avaren, &c. Von L. J. Fitzinger. Wien., 1853. 

43 Schsedel, Hirn und Seele des Menschen und der Thiere nach alter, Geschlecht und 
Race dargestellt nach neuen methoden und Untersuchungen von Emil Huschke. Jena, 1 854. 

44 Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes 
of the United States. By H. R. Schoolcraft. Part II. Philadelphia, 1852. 



218 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

has been accomplished for this science in America, hut also the 
chief part of all the contributions which it has, from time to time, 
received from different sources. It is well known to the ethnolo- 
gical world, that at the time of his death (1851), he was slowly and 
carefully maturing his views upon the great leading questions of 
his favorite science, by researches of the most varied and extensive 
character. From the cranioscopical details which constitute so im- 
portant a feature in that elaborate work, the Crania Americana, he 
had beeu gradually and almost insensibly led to occupy a more 
comprehensive field — a field embracing ethnology in its physiolo- 
gical and archaeological aspects. The Crania JEgyptiaca was the 
forerunner of a contemplated series of philosophical generalizations 
in Anthropology, — the matured and positive conclusions of years 
of severe and cautious study. In this series, so long contemplated, 
so often delayed for critical examination, and at last so unexpectedly, 
and I may add, so unfortunately arrested, Dr. Morton fondly hoped 
to develope and clearly demonstrate the fundamental principles or 
elements of scientific ethnology. But Providence had ordered other- 
wise ; for at this critical juncture — so critical for the proper expo- 
sition of Dr. M.'s long treasured and anxiously examined views, as 
well as for the proper direction of the infant science — he was stricken 
down, and the rich mental gatherings of a life-time dissipated in a 
moment. 45 

Through the munificent kindness of a number of our citizens, his 
magnificent collection of Human Crania, recently increased by the 
receipt of sixty-seven skulls from various sources, has been perma- 
nently deposited in the Museum of the Academy, 46 a silent but 
expressive witness of the scientific zeal, industry, and singleness of 
purpose of one who, to use the language of Mr. Davis, " has the 
rare merit, after the distinguished Gottingen Professor, of having 
by his genius laid the proper basis of this science, and by his 
labors raised upon this foundation the two first permanent and 
beautiful superstructures, in the Crania Americana, and the Crania 
JEgyptiaca." 47 

Prior to his decease, Dr. M. had received about 100 crania, in 
addition to those mentioned in the third edition of his Catalogue. 
Since 1849, therefore, the collection has been augmented by the 
addition of 167 skulls. Very recently I have carefully inspected, 
re-arranged, and labelled it, and prepared for publication a new and 
corrected edition of the Catalogue. At present the collection em- 
braces 1035 crania, representing more than 150 different nations, 

45 Unpublished Introduction to " Descriptions and Delineations of Skulls in the Mortonian 
Collection." 

46 See Proceedings of the Academy, Vol. VI. pp. 321, 324. 
*' Crania Britannica, decade I., p. 1. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



219 



tribes, and races. It occupies sixteen cases on the first gallery, on 
the south side of the lower room of the Museum. For convenience 
of study and examination, I have grouped it according to Race, 
Family, Tribe, &c, strictly adhering, however, to the classification 
of Dr. Morton. 

The crania are distributed as follows i 48 



I. Caucasian Group. 

1. Scandinavian Race. 

Norwegian 1 

Swedish Peasants 7 

Finland Swedes 2 

Suderinanland Swedes 3 

Ostrogoth 1 

Turannic Swede 1 

Cimbric Swedes..., 3 

Swedish Finns 3 

21 
2. Finnish or Tchudic Race. 
True Finns 10 

3. Suevic Race. 

Germans 11 

Dutchman 1 

Prussians 4 

Burgundian 1 



4. Anglo-Saxon. 



English.. 



5. Anglo- American. 

6. Celtic Race. 
Irish 

Celtic (?) heads from Catacombs of Paris, 
Celt (?) from the field of Waterloo 



17 

4 



7. Sclavonic Race. 
Sclavonians 

8. Pelasgic Race.* 9 

Ancient Phoenician 

Ancient Roman 

Greek 

Circassians 

Armenians 

Parsees 



4 
1 

13 

2 



Affghan 1 

Grseco-Egyptians 23 

39 
9. Semitic Race. 

Arabs 5 

Hebrews 8 

Abyssinian 1 



10. Berber Race. (T 



Guanche\ 



14 
1 



11. Nilotic Race. 

Ancient Theban Egyptians 34 

" Memphite " 17 

" Abydos " 2 

" Alexandrian" 3 

Egyptians from Gizeh 16 

Kens or Ancient Nubians 4 

Ombite Egyptians 3 

Maabdeh Egyptians 4 

Miscellaneous 5 

Fellahs 19 

107 
12. Indostanic Race. 

Ayras (?) 6 

Thuggs 2 

Bengalese 32 

Uncertain 3 

43 
13. Indo-Chinese Race. 

Burmese 2 

II. Mongolian Group. 
1. Chinese Race. 

Chinese 11 

Japanese 1 

12 



ie It is proper to observe, that the above table is not an attempt at scientific classification, 
but simply an arrangement adopted for convenience of study and examination. 

49 Dr. Morton used the term Pelasgic too comprehensively. The Circassians, Armenians 
and Persians should not be placed in this group. 



220 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



2. Hyperborean Race. 

Burat Mongol 1 

Kainschatkan 1 

Kalmuck 1 

Laplanders 4 

Hybrid Laplander 1 

Eskimo 6 

14 

III. Malay Group. 
1. Malayan Race. 

Malays 24 

Dyaks 2 

26 
2. Polynesian Race. 

Kanakas 7 

New Zealanders 4 

Marquesas 1 

12 

IV. American Group. 
1. Barbarous Race, 
a. North Americans. 

Arickarees.. 3 

Assinaboins 3 

Chenouks 8 

Oregonians 6 

Cherokees 6 

Chetimaches 2 

Chippeways 2 

Cotonays 3 

Creeks 4 

Dacotas 2 

Hurons 4 

Iroquois 3 

Illinois 2 

Klikatat 1 

Lenapes 10 

Mandans 7 

Menominees 7 

Miamis 12 

Minetaris 4 

Mohawks 3 

Naas 2 

Narragansets 10 

Natchez 2 

Naticks 5 

Nisqually 1 

Osages 2 

Otoes ... 4 

Ottawas 4 

Ottigamies...,, 4 

Pawnees 2 



Fenobscots 2 

Pottawatomies 4 

Sauks 3 

Seminoles 16 

Shawnees 4 

Shoshones 4 

Upsarookas 2 

Winnebagos 2 

Yamassees 3 

Californians 2 

Miscellaneous 46 

216 
b. Central Americans. 

Maya 1 

Fragments from Yucatan 2 

3 
c. South Americans. 

Araucanians 12 

From Mounds 2 

Charibs 3 

Pat&gonians 3 

Brazilian 7 

27 
2. Toltecan Race. 

a. Peruvian Family. 

Aricans 20 

Pachacamac 104 

Pisco 62 

Santa 8 

Lima 7 

Callao 3 

Miscellaneous 9 

Elongated skulls from Titicaca, &c. ... 8 

221 
b. Mexican Family. 

Ancient Mexicans 24 

Modern Mexicans 9 

Lipans 2 

35 

V. Negro Group. 
1. American born, 16 

2. Native Africans, 88 

3. Hovas, 2 

4. Alforian Race. 

Australians 11 

Oceanic Negroes 2 

119 



OF THE EACES OF MEN. 



221 



VI. Mixed Eaces. 

Copts 6 

Negroid Egyptians 12 

Nubians 4 

Hispano-Peruvian 2 

Negroid-Indian 3 

Hispano-Indian 1 



Malayo-Chinese 1 

Mulattoes 2 



VII. Lt/NATICS AND IDIOTS, 

VIII. Illustrative of Growth, 

Phrenological Skulls, 

Nation uncertain, 

Total, 



30 

18 

7 

2 

11 

1035 



II. 



" Cranium, quippe quod omnium corporis partium nobilissimas includit, 
indolem ac proprietatem cseterorum organorum reprsesentare existimatur ; 
nam quidquid proprii varise illius partes prje se ferunt, hie parro spatio con- 
junctum, et liniamentis, quae extingui et deleri nunquam possunt, expressum 
reperitur. IUud adumbrationem exhibet imaginis, quam spectator peritus 
ex singulis partibus vivide sibi ante oculos fingere potest." — Hueck. 

In the human brain we find those characteristics which particu- 
larly distinguish man from the brute creation. The differences 
between the various races of men are fundamental differences in 
intellectual capacity, as well as in physical conformation. The 
brain is the organ or physical seat of the mind, and variations 
in its development are, as is well known, the constant accompani- 
ments of mental inequalities. Hence, in the variations in size, tex- 
ture, &c, of the encephalon, and the proportions of its different 
parts, we are necessarily led to seek in great measure for the causes 
which so widely and constantly dispart the numerous families, which, 
in the aggregate, constitute mankind. In accordance with its great 
importance and dignity, the brain has been carefully deposited in an 
irregular bony case, — the calvaria — to which are attached certain 
bony appendages for the lodgment of the organs of the senses, by 
which the brain, and through it the mind — the mental attribute 
of the living principle — is brought into relation with external 
nature. Now as the configuration of the brain is, in general, 
expressed by that of its osseous covering, and as the development 
of the facial skeleton affords an excellent indication of the size of 
the organs which it accommodates, it follows that in the size of the 
head and face, and their mutual relations, we find the best indi- 
cations of those mental and animal differences which, under all 
circumstances and from ante-historic times, have manifested them- 
relves as the dividing line between the Races of Men. Moreover, 
if the construction of each and every part of the fabric is in harmony 



222 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

with, and to a certain extent represented in that of all other parts, 50 — 
as the laws of the philosophico-transcendental anatomy seem firmly 
to have established, — it will be evident that the cranium is the 
index, so to speak, of the entire economy ; for the relation between 
the cranium on the one hand, and the face, thorax, and abdominal 
organs, respectively, on the other, or, in other words, between the 
cerebral or intellectual lobes of the brain, and the sensory ganglia, 
and nerves, is the relation of mental powers to animal propensities, 
and exactly upon this relation depends the nature and character of 
the individual man, and the family group to which he naturally 
belongs. Examples of this fact are everywhere to be found, alike in 
the transitionary, as in the extreme specimens of the human series. 
Thus it is a general and well-marked truth, that in those inferior 
Races — the so-called prognathous — characterized by a narrow skull, 
receding forehead, and enormous anterior development of the max- 
illa, the mental is in entire abeyance to the animal ; so that their 
sensuality is only equalled by their stupidity, as one might readily 
infer from the ample accommodations for the organs of the senses. 
The pyramidal type is another inferior form, singularly analogous to 
the prognathous in certain respects, but differing from it in others 
hereafter to be mentioned. Races possessing this form of cranium, 
manifest corresponding peculiarities in intellectual power. 

Undoubtedly, then, the human cranium recommends itself to our 
earnest attention- as the "best epitome of man," — the individual in 
the concrete ; or, as Zeune has beautifully expressed it, " der Bliithe 
des ganzen organischen Leibes und Lebens ;" and notwithstanding 
the adaptation between it and the rest of the skeleton -=- an adapta- 
tion declaring itself in relations of size, function, nutritive, and 
developmental processes, &c. — we may study the cranium by and 
for itself, with reasonable hopes of success. 

As yet, the labors of the cranioscopist have given to anthropology 
comparatively few fundamental and well established facts. Of these, 
the most important, probably, as well as the best substantiated, is 
that of the permanency and non-transmutability of cranial form and 
characteristics. " There is, on the whole," says Lawrence, " an unde- 
niable, nay, a very remarkable constancy of character in the crania 
of different nations, contributing very essentially to national pecu- 
liarities of form, and corresponding exactly to the features which 

60 " Tout etre organist forme un ensemble, un systeme unique et clos, dont les parties se 
correspondent mutueUment, et concourent a la meme action definitive par une reaction 
reciproque. Aucune de ces parties ne peut changer sans que les autres ne coangent aussi, 
et par consequent chacune d'elles prise separement indique et donne toutes les autres." 
Cuviek. Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe; ridigis par le Dr. Iloefer. Paris, 1850, p. 62. 



Of THE RACES OF MEN. 223 

characterize such nations." 51 !Nor does this fact stand alone. It is 
associated with another which should never be lost sight of in all 
our speculations upon the unity or diversity, geographical origin and 
distribution, affiliation and antiquity of the races of men. I allude 
to that insensible gradation which appears to be the law of cranial 
forms, no less than of all the objects in nature. Erom the isolation 
and exclusive consideration of these facts, have resulted not a few 
erroneous assertions, which have tended to embarrass the science. 
Thus, it has been considered, in general, a matter of but little diffi- 
culty to discriminate between the crania of different races. But 
those who are accustomed to this kind of examination, know that 
this statement is true only for the standard or typical forms of very 
diverse, races, and that as soon as certain divergent forms of two 
allied races or families are compared, the difficulties become very 
apparent. On the other hand, it has been affirmed, that in any 
one nation it is easy to point out entirely dissimilar types of con- 
figuration. Thus the distinguished anatomist, Prof. M. J. Weber, 
misled apparently by the restricted and artificial classification of 
Blumenbach, arrives at the general conclusion that "there is no 
proper mark of a definite race-form of the cranium so firmly 
attached that it may not be found in some other race." 52 The 
assumption of the universality of certain ethnical forms, though 
countenanced by more than one writer, does not rest upon sufficient 
evidence to warrant its acceptance. Another prevalent but equally 
gratuitous notion is, that the more ancient the heads, the more they 
tend to approximate one primitive form or type. What this primi- 
tive model is. like, has not, as far as I can learn, been indicated. 

Again, a confusion highly detrimental to the philosophical status 
and scientific progress of Ethnology, has resulted from the unjustifiable 
assumption, that resemblances in cranial form and characteristics 
necessarily betoken, in a greater or less degree, congenital affilia- 
tions. It by no means follows, as some appear to have thought, that 
because widely and persistently discrepant forms are unrelated ab 
origine, — closely coincident forms are as exact indications of such 
primary relation. To say that the Polar man, — the Eskimo of 
America and the Samoyede of Asia, — should in all natural classifi- 
cation be associated, or at least placed in juxtaposition with certain 
dark races of the tropics, in consequence of well-marked cranial 
similiarities, is a fact as singular as it is true ; but to conclude from 
these similarities alone, that they are affiliated and have one common 

51 Lectures, &c, p. 225. 

52 Crania Britannica, p. 4. — Die Lehre von den Ur- und Racen-Formen der Sch'adel und 
Becken des Menschen, S. 5, 1830. 

11 



224 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

origin, is at once illogical and unwarrantable. Resemblances in 
physical conformation and in intellectual capacity, manners, and 
customs, growing out of, and dependent in great measure upon such 
conformation, are indications rather of a similarity of position in 
the great natural scale of the human family, than of identity of 
origin. To establish identity, proof of another kind is required. 
That positive identity of cranial form, structure and gentilitial cha- 
racters is the best evidence of identity of origin, or, at all events, of 
very close relationship, there can be no doubt. But identity must not 
be inferred from striking similarity. The confusion of terms has led 
to much error. Similarity in the features above alluded to, indicates 
merely an allied natural position, and nothing more. This distinc- 
tion is as important in cranioscopy as that made by the comparative 
anatomist between the analogies and homologies of the skeleton. 

Somebody has said that " when history is silent, language is evi- 
dence." The cranioscopist knows that oftentimes, when both history 
and language are silent, cranial forms become evidence. For the 
cranial similarities and differences above mentioned may be estimated 
with mathematical accuracy and precision, by weight, measurement, 
&c. Hence, while the language of an ante-historic people may be 
lost, the discovery of their skulls will afford us the means of deter- 
mining their rank or position in the human scale, &c. From consi- 
derations of this nature, we are led to recognise the existence of a 
craniological school in Ethnology, a craniological principle of classi- 
fication and research, and a craniological test of affinity or diversity. 
According to Prichard, Ethnology is, equally with Geology, a branch 
of Palaeontology. "Geology," says he, "is the archaeology of the 
globe, — Ethnology that of its human inhabitants." 53 Latham, com- 
menting upon this sentence, very appropriately observes, that "when 
Ethnology loses its palgeontological character, it loses half its scientific 
elements." 54 From this we learn the importance of osteology, espe- 
cially the cranial department, since it constitutes one of the surest, 
and often the only guide in identifying ancient populations. Dr. 
Latham, the well-known philologist, lays great stress upon the ethno- 
logical value of language, which he speaks of as " yielding in defi- 
nitude to no characteristic whatever." .... "Whatever maybe 
said against certain over-statements as to constancy, it is an undoubted 
fact, that identity of language is primd facie evidence of identity of 
origin." 55 Among the apophthegms appended to his work on the 
Varieties of Man, the same opinion occurs. — " In the way of physical 

53 Anniversary Address, delivered before the Ethnological Society of London, in 1847. 
5* Man and his Migrations, Amer. Edit. New York, 1852, p. 41. 
55 Ibid, p. 35. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 225 

characteristics, common conditions develop common points of con- 
formation. Hence, as elements of classification, physical characters 
are of less value than the philological moral ones." 56 There are 
reasons for dissenting from the opinion of this eminent philologist. 
"When we contemplate the mutability and destructibility of languages, 
as abundantly exemplified in the obliteration of the Etruscan dialect 
by the Roman-Latin ; the Celtiberian and Turdetan by the Latin and 
Spanish ; the Syriac by Arabic ; Celtic by the Latin and French ; 
the Celtic of Britain by the Saxon and English ; the Pelhevi and Zend 
by the Persian, and the Mauri tanian by Arabic; 57 when we reflect 
how the Epirotes and Siculi changed their language, without con- 
quest or colonization, into Creek, and how the ancient Pelasgi, all 
the primitive inhabitants of the Peloponnessus, and many of those 
of Arcadia and Attica, abandoned their own language and adopted 
that of the Hellenes ; M when we behold the Negroes of St. Domingo 
speaking the French tongue, the Bashkirs, of Finnish origin, speak- 
ing Turkish ; 59 and when, finally, as one instance of another and 
significant class of facts, we call to mind how the Carelians, in con- 
sequence of certain linguistic analogies, have been classed with the 
Finns, though descended from an entirely different race, who, at an 
early period, overran the region about Lake Ladoga, 60 — we are 
"disposed to believe with Humboldt" — I am using the words of 
Morton — " that we shall never be able to trace the affiliation of 
nations by a mere comparison of languages ; for this, after all, is but 
one of many clews by which that great problem is to be solved." 61 
Surely anatomy aud physiology — those handmaids of the zoologist 
— are more powerful, and, in the very nature of things, better adapted 
to settle the question of the unity of man, to determine whether the 
human family is composed of several species, or of but one species 
comprising many varieties. Surely the human skeleton is more en- 
during and less mutable than the oldest laneuao-e. Instances are 
not wanting, as we have seen above, of a nation forgetting its own 
language in its admiration for the more perfect speech of another 
people. But, as far as I am aware, not a solitary instance can be 
adduced of a nation, genealogically pure, entirely changing its physical 
characters for those of another. Let us conclude then, with Bodi- 
chon, that Physiology is superior to Philology as an instrument of 
ethnological research. — " To throw light upon the question of origins, 
it is necessary to appeal to a science more precise, and founded on 

56 Varieties of Man, p. 562. 5' Hamilton Smith, op. cit., p. 178. 

58 Nicbuhr, Hist, of Rome, 1, 37. 

59 Helwerzen, Annuaire des Mines de Russie, 1840, p. 84. 

6° Haartman, Transactions of the Royal Society of Stockholm, for 1847. 
61 Crania Americana, p. 18. 

15 



226 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

the nature of the object which we examine. This science is the Phy- 
siology of races, or, in other words, a knowledge of their moral and 
physical characters. Through Physiology has been established the 
existence of antediluvian beings, their genera, their species, and 
their varieties ; by it also we shall discover the origin of races of 
men, even the most mysterious. Through it we shall one day be 
able to classify populations as surely as we now class animals and 
plants : history, philology, annals, inscriptions, the monuments of 
arts and of religion, will be auxiliaries in these researches. Herein 
we consider its indications as motives of certitude, and its decisions 
as a criterion." 62 

Anthropology has been involved in not a little confusion by certain 
injudicious departures from the well-tried zoological methods em- 
ployed by naturalists generally. But little difficulty seems to be 
experienced in the practical determination of species in the animal 
and vegetable worlds ; but as soon as the rules and specific distinc- 
tions here employed have been applied to man, exceptions have 
been taken at once, and attempts made to invalidate their appli- 
cability, by excluding man entirely from the pale of the animal 
kingdom, as if, in the latter, development, formation and deformation 
were controlled by laws different from these processes in the former. 
Barbancois regards man as " un type tout a part dans la creation, 
comme-le representant d'un regne particulier — le regne moral." So 
the celebrated Marcel de Serres says, " l'homme ne constitue dans la 
nature ni une espece, ni un genre, ni un ordre, il est a mi seul un 
regne, le rSgne humain." 13 Aristotle, the father of philosophical 
natural history, Pay, Brisson, Pennant, Vic dAzyr, Baubenton, 
Tiedemann, and others equally distinguished, have all unwisely at- 
tempted this disruption of nature. The futility of the arguments 
employed may be learned by reference to Swainson's Nat. Hist, and 
Classification of Quadrupeds. 61 But those who recognize the ani- 
mality of man, and place him accordingly at the head of the Mam- 
malia, are not exactly agreed as to the extent of isolation which 
should be claimed for him in this position, or, in other words, differ- 
ence of opinion exists as to the extent and scientific meaning of the 
gap which separates him from the highest brute. Linnaeus grouped 
Man, the SimiEe and Bats under the general division, Primates. 65 
niiger, 66 Cuvier, 67 Lawrence, 68 and others, assign him a distinct order. 

62 Etudes sur PAlge'rie, Alger, p. 18. 

63 Voyage au Pole Sud. Anthropologic, de Dumoutier, par Blanchard. Paris, 1854, p. 18. 
e*Pp 8-10 

65 He observes, " Nullum characterem hactenus eruere potui, unde Homo a Simia inter- 
noscatur." — Fauna Suecica. Preface, p. ii. 

66 Prodomus Systematis Mammalium. 67 Regne Animal. 68 Op. cit. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 227 

Van Ameinge considers Man the sole representative of a distinct and 
separate mammalian class, to which, he applies the term Psychical 
or Spiritual, in contradistinction to the Instinctive mammals. 69 As 
might be naturally expected frorii the above remarks, still less agree- 
ment is manifested in relation to the classification of the different 
races or tribes of men. This want of accordance arises from the 
difficulty of determining what characters are fundamental and typical, 
and what are not. 

Now, it should never be forgotten that an ethnical, like any other 
natural type, is an ideal creation, not a positive entity. It is analo- 
gous to the mean or average of a series of numbers. These numbers 
may all be but slightly different from each other, and yet none of 
them be exactly identical with the mean. In examining a number 
of objects presenting many peculiarities, the mind instinctively 
figures to itself an object possessing all these peculiarities. This 
object, this ideal image, gradually assumes the dignity and import- 
ance of a standard to which all other similar objects are referred, as 
greater or less approximations to the type, the approximation being 
dependent upon the degree of predominance of the peculiarities in 
question. If, on comparing any body with this imaginary standard 

— "this form which exists everywhere, and is nowhere to be found" 

— the points of resemblance are in number equal to or even less 
than the points of difference, then it is said to diverge from the type. 
It is a divergent form. IS aw, a type as it is manifested in nature is, 
for all practical purposes, fixed and immutable; our mental con- 
ception of it is necessarily a constantly varying one. The more 
numerous the individuals of the group, and the more extensive our 
examination, the more perfect will be our generalization, upon 
which, in fact, the type is based. The examination of but a few 
individuals of a group is apt to lead to an erroneous idea of the type. 

But a singular fact here claims our attention. Along with this 
increasing perfection of the typical idea comes a diminished confi- 
dence in its importance ; for the same observations which serve to 
establish the type, also lead us to perceive that the distance which 
separates one type from another is a plenum, and is not marked by 
gaps, but by transitionary forms — not transitionary in the sense of 
variations from certain persistent forms brought about by climatic 
conditions, &c, but transitionary forms ah origine and self-existent, 
presenting themselves unchanged as they were characterized by the 
Great First Cause, and inherently capable of those known and 
limited variations produced by intermarriage, &c. The elements 

e» An Investigation of the Theories of the Nat. History of Man, &c. New York, 1848, 
p. 72. 



228 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

which establish a type serve to connect it insensibly with those of 
another. Hence the great difficulty experienced in attempting to 
classify the members of the Human Family. The discrepancy of 
opinion has extended not only to the number of divisions to be 
made, but also to the particular races which should be assigned to 
each division. Blumenbach long ago expressed this difficulty. We 
have only to examine the list of writers who have attempted the 
classification of Human Races, and observe how they differ in the 
number of their primary departments, to be convinced of the pre- 
matureness of the whole attempt, and the scanty scientific data upon 
which such very artificial divisions have been erected. It appears to 
me that much of the difficulty arises from the scanty information 
which we possess concerning the number of primaeval cranial types, 
the number of naturally divergent forms of each of these, and the 
degree of divergency permitted, and lastly, the tests by which to 
discriminate between forms naturally aberrant, and those hybrid 
results of blood-crossing. The study of divergent forms is of great 
importance, since in their varied but limited deviations from the 
type — like all exceptions to general rules — -they indicate the 
essentials of the type while demonstrating a serial, archetypal unity 
of the human family in keeping with the entire animal world. To 
speak, therefore, of " developing the limits of a variety," is simply 
to demonstrate the connections, relations, and persistence of those 
varieties. The diversities of cranial form presented by any nation 
or tribe should therefore be regarded as the radii, so to speak, by 
which that tribe is connected with the rest of the humanitarian 
series, whether living or extinct, or, in the course of future geolo- 
gical changes, yet to appear. 

It is well known that naturalists rely mainly upon form, color, 
proportions — the externals, in short. — to establish species. The 
illustrious Cuvier, taking higher ground, attempted to develope the 
laws of classification by a resort to the comparative method in ana- 
tomy. With the osteological branch of this method, as an instru- 
ment of research, he undertook his grand scheme of the restoration 
of the fossil world and the determination of its relation to the living 
zoology. His reliance upon internal structure in preference to 
external characters, was as much a matter of necessity as of choice, 
since of the palseontological objects of his study, the bony skeleton 
and the teeth alone remained from which to recompose the forms 
of the past animal world, and determine their species. In the course 
of his investigations a remarkable fact became evident — that in 
many genera of animals, species externally well chai'acterized, dif- 
fered scarcely at all in their bony frame-work. Regarding these 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 229 

slight differences — by such a practised eye certainly not over- 
looked — as trivial, and losing sight of the singular importance 
they derive from their historical permanency, he was led in the end 
to deny to comparative osteology the value he first assigned it. 
Thus, notwithstanding his great scientific labors, he left it unde- 
cided whether the fossil horse was specifically identical with the 
living or not. 70 On this point naturalists still differ in opinion. 
Whilst by the aid of comparative anatomy — for the cultivation 
of which he enjoyed unusual advantages — he was enabled to startle 
the world with the brilliant announcement that there had been 
several zoological creations, of which man was one, we find him at 
length hesitatingly denying to anatomical characters the power of 
determining species. But the question arises — a question already 
perceived and disposed of in the affirmative by some ethnologists — 
whether anatomical characters have not a higher signification than 
the mere determination of species ; whether, in fact, they are not 
generic. It would, indeed, appear, that while the external or peri- 
pheral form and appendages determine species, the internal organism 
establishes genera. But the genus must contain within itself and 
foreshadow the essential characters of the species ; there must be an 
adaptation between the peripheral conformation and central organic 
structure. As a very slight error committed in the first step of a 
long and complicated mathematical calculation magnifies itself at 
every subsequent step of the process, until a result is obtained very 
different from the true one, so a comparatively minute peculiarity in 
the osseous structure of an animal may repeat itself through the 
muscles, fascia, and integumentary covering, expressing itself at last 
as a characteristic, which, though it might be difficult to point out 
exactly, is seen to be an individual or specific mark by which 
the animal may be discriminated from other individuals or from 
allied species. And as the result of the supposed problem must 
always be the same, so long as the incorporated error is not elimi- 
nated, so the external peculiarity of the animal must ever remain the 
same, while the internal structure mark varies not. This constant 
and historically immutable relation between structure and form is in 
consonance with the law of the "correlation of forms," first sug- 
gested, I believe, by Cuvier, and by him used in such a masterly 
manner in the elucidation of the laws of zoology. 

"The importance to be attached to the zoological characters 
afforded by the slighter modifications of structure," writes Martin, 
" rises as we ascend in the scale of being. In the arrangement of 



™ Diseours sur les Revolutions du Globe, p. 76. 



230 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

mammalia and birds, for example, minutiae which, among the Inverte- 
brata, would be deemed of little note, become of decided value, and 
are no longer to be neglected. Even the modifications, however 
slight, of a common type, now become stamped with a value, the 
ratio of which increases as we advance from the lower to the higher 
orders. Hence, with respect to mammalia, the highest class of 
Vertebrata, every structural phase claims attention ; and, when we 
advance to the highest of the highest class, viz., Man, and the Quad- 
rumana, the naturalist lays a greater stress on minute grades and 
modifications of form, than he does when among the cetacea or the 
marsupials ; and hence, groups are separated upon characters thus 
derived, because they involve marked differences in the animal 
economy, and because it is felt that a modification, in itself of no 
great extent, leads to most important results. Carrying out the 
principle of an increase in the value of differential characters as we 
advance in the scale of being, it may be affirmed that, upon legiti- 
mate zoological grounds, the organic conformation of man, modelled, 
possibly, upon the same type as that of the chimpanzee or orang, 
but modified, with a view to fit him for the habits, manners, and, 
indeed, a totality of active existence, indicative of a destiny and 
purposes participated in neither by the chimpanzee nor any other 
animal, removes Man from the Quadrumana, not merely in a generic 
point of view, but from the pale of the Primates, to an exclusive 
situation. The zoological value of characters derived from struc- 
tural modifications is commensurate with the results which they 
involve ; let it then be shown that man, though a cheiropod (hand- 
footed), possesses structural modifications leading to most important 
results, and our views are at once justified." 71 

It will thus be seen that anatomical differences are valuable to the 
zoologist more from their permanency, than from their magnitude. 
"A species," says Prof. Leidy, "is a mere convenient word with 
which naturalists empirically designate groups of organized beings 
possessing characters of comparative constancy, as far as historic 
experience has guided them in giving due weight to such con- 
stancy." 72 An organic form historically constant is, therefore, a 
simple and exact expression of a species. In this constancy of a 
form lies its typical importance as a standard or point of departure 

71 A General Introduction to the Natural History of Mammiferous Animals, with a parti- 
cular -view of the Physical History of Man, &c. By W. C. S. Martin, F. L. S. London, 
1841, p. 200. 

? 2 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Vol. VII. p. 201. — See also a letter 
from Prof. L. to Dr. Nott, of Mobile, published in the Appendix to Hotz's translation of 
Gobineau's work on the Inequality of Races, &c, p. 480. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 231 

in all our attempts at classification and developing the laws of forma- 
tion. Tlie mere shape, volume, or configuration, is secondary. 

The polar, brown, and grizzly bears differ but little in their oste- 
ology ; the same is true of the horse, ass, and zebra, and of the lion, 
tiger, and panther. By most naturalists the horse and ass are referred 
to distinct species, — by Prof. Owen to distinct genera. The latter 
gentleman specifically separates a fossil from the recent horse, in 
consequence of a slight curvature in the teeth of the former. Accord- 
ing to Flourens, the dog and fox belong to different genera ; the dog 
and wolf to distinct species, as also the lion and tiger. 73 Now the 
crania of the horse and ass differ in their nasal bones only. The 
pupil of the dog is disc-shaped ; that of the fox, elongated. Says 
Knox : " The nasal bones of the ass differ constantly from those of 
the horse ; so do those of the lion and tiger. The distinction extends 
to the whole physiognomical character of the crania in these four 
species, and in all others. But so it is in man, chiefly in these very 
bones, and in the physiognomy of the skeleton of the face. For it 
is not in the comparative length or size merely of the nasal or maxil- 
lary bones that the cranium of the Bosjieman and the Australian 
differ from the other races of men, although these differences are no 
doubt as constant and real as are the anatomical differences of any 
two species ; they differ in every respect, and especially do they dis- 
play physiognomical distinction, which the experienced eye detects 
at once. When fossil man shall be discovered, he, also, will be 
proved to have belonged to a species distinct from any that now 
live. By the generic law I am about to establish, his affiliation with 
the existing races may and will be proved, first by the fact of his 
extinction, but still more by those slight anatomical differences, 
which, though seemingly unimportant, are not really so. His rela- 
tion to the present or living world will be the same as that of the 
extinct solid-ungular and earnivora to the living — generically identi- 
cal, specifically distinct." 74 

Between the crania of the various races of men, the same slight, 
but constant, and therefore important, differences can be pointed out, 
in some instances even more marked and better characterized than 
those which are considered by naturalists of high distinction, as suffi- 
cient to form a basis upon which to establish species. It is true that 
no human race possesses a bone the more or less in the cranium, than 
the others ; but it is equally true that human crania differ, in some 
instances quite remarkably, in the size and proportions of their con- 
's Op. cit., p. 111. 

" Introduction to Inquiries into the Philosophy of Zoology, by Kobt. Knox, M.D., &c, 
in London Lancet, Oct., 1855. 



232 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

stitnent bones, and these differences are not accidental and fluctua- 
ting, but persistent. Thus, the massive, broad, and outward-shelving 
malar bones of the Polar man are unlike those of any other race. 
So, the superior maxillae of the Coast African is so unlike that of 
any other people, as to have become a standard of comparison for 
inferiority — a standard expressed by the word prognathous. Differ- 
ences in the nasal bones, in the size ol the frontal sinuses, in the 
prominence of the occiput, in the angle at which the parietal bones 
join each other, in the form and arrangement of the teeth, in the 
relation of head to face, in the relative situations of the great occi- 
pital foramen and the bony meatus, in the form of the skull, and the 
configuration of its base ; and, as the result of all these, in the physi- 
ognomy of the facial bones, exist, as I shall presently endeavor to 
show, and are perpetuated from one generation to another as con- 
stant and unaltered features. 

Cranial differentise, however slight, derive additional importance 
from their .relation to the physiognomical character of the skull as 
a whole, and daily observation shows this character to be more im- 
portant than is generally considered. The labors of Porta, Camper, 
Lebrun, Lavater, Bichat, Moreau de la Sarthe, and others, have given 
us the scientific elements of a physiognomy or physiology of the face, 
as those of Blumenbach and Morton have established a physiology 
of the cranium. Between the muscular and integumentary investi- 
titure of the face and head on the one hand, and the bony structure 
of these parts on the other, there is a decided adaptation. Whether 
the soft parts determine the form of the osseous frame-work, or the 
latter that of the former, does not so much concern us, at present, as 
the fact of adaptation. That this adaptation exists, there can scarcely 
be a doubt. " Tout dans la nature," beautifully and truthfully writes 
De la Sarthe, " est rapport et harmonie ; chaque apparence externe 
est le signe d'une propriety : chaque point de la superficie d'un corps 
annonce l'etat de sa profondeur et de sa structure." 75 In virtue of 
this harmony, we find the physiognomy of the skull expressing the 
true value of its osteologic peculiarities, even when these are so 
slight as to appear in themselves trivial and insignificant. Soemmer- 
ing, not perceiving the import of this relation, tells us that he could 
find no well-marked differences between the German, Swiss, French, 
Swedish and Russian skulls in his collection, leaving it to be inferred 
that none such existed. 76 At a later period, and from the same 

' 5 Neuvieme Etude sur Lavater. 

76 Lawrence informs us that his friend, Mr. Geo. Lewis, in a tour through France and 
Germany, observed that the lower and anterior part of the cranium is larger in the French, 
the upper and anterior in the Germans; and that the upper and posterior region is larger 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 233 

cause, Cuvier, while conducting his palasontological researches, more 
than once fell into an analogous error. 

From the foregoing remarks, it will be seen that it is a matter of 
mucin importance to be able to discriminate between typical or race- 
forms of crania, and those modifications of shape produced, to a 
certain extent, by age, sex, development, intermixture of races, arti- 
ficial deformations, &c. Unless these distinctions be observed, and 
due allowance made for them, it will be utterly impossible to deter- 
mine the number and character of the primitive types — an attempt 
already almost hopelessly beyond our power, in consequence of the 
ceaseless migrations and affiliations which have been going on 
amongst the races of men since the remotest antiquity. The modi- 
fications of cranial form, from these various causes, are so many 
associated elements, which must be individually isolated before we 
can determine the true value of each. In proportion as this isolation 
is complete, so will our results approximate the truth. 

It is very well known that the skulls of the lower animals undergo 
certain changes in conformation as they advance in age. In a limited 
degree, this appears to be true of man also ; though the extent of 
these changes, and the period at which they are most noticeable — 
whether during intra-uterine life, or subsequent to birth — are points 
not yet definitively settled. However, from the observations of 
Soemmering, Camper, Blumenbach, Loder and Ludwig, we learn 
that in very young children, even in infants at the moment of birth, 
the race-lineaments are generally but positively expressed. Blumen- 
bach, in his Decades, figures the head of a Jewess, aged five years, 
a Burat child, one and a half years, and a newly-born negro ; in 
each of these the ethnic characters of the race to which it belongs 
are distinctly seen. The Mortonian collection furnishes a number 
of examples confirmatory of this interesting and remarkable fact. 

Occasionally the tardy development of certain parts may give rise 
to apparent modifications, as indicated in the following passage from 
Dr. Gosse's highly interesting essay upon the artificial deformations 
of the skull. "II n'est pas meme rare, en Europe, de voir le front 
paraitre plus saillant chez un grand nombre d'enfants, en raison du 
faible developpement de la face. Toutefois, jusqu'a, l'age de dix a 
douze ans, il existe en general une predominance de la region occipi- 
tale qui parait se developper d'autant plus que l'intelligence est plus 
exercee. Ce n'est souvent que vers cette epoque de la vie que les os 

in the former than in the latter. (Op. cit, p. 239.) — Count Gobineau, in his work already 
alluded to, speaks of a certain enlargement on each side of the lower lip, which is found 
among the English and Germans. 



234 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

propres du nez tendent a se relever davantage suivant les traits des 
individus ou des races." 77 

Some physiologists have supposed that permanent modifications 
of cranial form are produced during severe and protracted accouche- 
ments. Gall, long ago, refuted this notion, and every accoucheur has, 
in fact, constant opportunities of satisfying himself of the untena- 
bility of this doctrine. It has more than once happened to me, as it 
necessarily does to every physician engaged in the practice of ob- 
stetrics, to witness a head, long compressed in a narrow pelvis, born 
with the nose greatly depressed, the forebead flattened, the parietal 
bones overriding each other, and the whole skull completely wire- 
drawn, so as to resemble some of the permanent deformations pic- 
tured in the books ; and yet, in a few days, the inherent elasticity of 
the bony case and its contained parts has sufficed to restore it to its 
natural form. But the great objection to this opinion lies in the fact 
of a conformity between the cranial and pelvic types of a particular 
race. Dr. Vrolick, following up the suggestions of Camper and some 
other observers, relative to certain peculiarities of the negro pelvis, 
has demonstrated the existence of a race-form for the pelvis as for 
the cranium. He has shown that the form of the head is adapted to 
the pelvic passage which it is compelled to traverse in the parturient 
act, and that the pelvis, like the skull, possesses its race-characters 
and sexual distinctions, sufficiently well marked, even at the infantile 
epoch. As in the zoological series, we find the cranium of the mon- 
key differing from that of the animals below it, and approximating 
the human type, so we find the pelvis pursuing the same gradation, 
from the Orang to the Bosjieman, from the Bosjieman to the Ethio- 
pian, from the Ethiopian to the Malay, and so on to the high caste 
"White races, where it attains its perfection, and is the farthest removed 
in form from that of the other mammiferse. I am aware that Weber 
has attempted to deny the value of these observations, by showing 
that, although certain pelvic forms occur more frequently in some 
races than in others, yet exceptions were found in the fact of the 
European conformation being occasionally encountered among other 
and very different races. " This is not proving much," as Be Gobi- 
neau acutely observes, " inasmuch as M. "Weber, in speaking of 
these exceptions, appears never to have entertained tbe idea, that 
their peculiar conformation could only be the result of a mixture of 
blood." 78 

" Essai stir les Deformations Artificielles du Crane, Par L. A. Gosse, de Geneve, &c. 
Paris, 1855. Published originally as a contribution to the "Annales d' Hygiene Publique et de 
Medecine Legale," 2e seric, 1855, tomes III. et IV. 

>» Op. cit., t. 1, p. 193. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 285 

In the study of cranial forms, sexual differences should not be 
overlooked. "The female skull," says Davis, "except in races 
equally distinguished by forms strikingly impressed, does not exhibit 
the gentilitial characters eminently." 79 It is well known to the ob- 
stetrician, that the male skull, at birth, is, on the average, larger than 
the female. 

A complete history of the development of the human brain and 
cranium, in the different races, would constitute one of the most 
valuable contributions to anthropology. Such a history alone can 
determine the true meaning of the various appearances which these 
parts assume in their transition from the ovum to the fully-developed 
typical character, and demonstrate their as yet mysterious relations 
to the innumerable forms of life which are scattered over the surface 
of the globe. To such a history must we look, also, for a solution 
of the question, as to whether the soft and pulpy brain models around 
itself its hard and resisting bony case, or, conversely, whether this 
latter gives shape to the former. 

During the first six weeks of embryonic life, the brain, clothed in 
its different envelopes, exists without any bony investment, being 
surrounded externally with an extremely thin, soft., and pliable carti- 
laginous membrane, in which ossification subsequently takes place. 
About the eighth week, as shown by the investigations of Gall, the 
ossific points appear in this membrane, sending out diverging radii 
in every direction. As this delicate cartilaginous layer is moulded 
nicely over the brain, the minute specks of calcareous matter, as they 
are deposited, must to some extent acquire the same form as the brain. 
Whether this be true or not, there is a manifest adaptation between 
the brain and cranium, the result of a harmony in growth, inseparably 
connected with the action of one developing principle in the human 
economy. From this fact, alone, we might fairly infer that differences 
in the volume and configuration of a number of crania are general 
indications of differences in the volume and configuration of their 
contained brains. One single fact, among many others, proves this 
admirable harmony. It is this : The process of ossification is at first 
most rapid in the bones composing the vault ; but presently ceasing 
here, it advances so rapidly in those of the base and inferior parts 
generally, that at birth the base is solid and incompressible, thus 
protecting from pressure the nervous centre of respiration, which is 
at this time firriier and better developed than the softer and less 
voluminous cerebral lobes. 

According to the embryologic investigations of M. de Serres, of 
all brains, that of the high-caste European is the most complex in 

? 9 Op. cit., p. 5. 



236 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

its organization. In attaining this high development, it passes suc- 
cessively through the forms which belong permanently to fishes, rep- 
tiles, birds, mammals, Negroes, Malays, Americans, and Mongolians. 

The bony structure undergoes similar alterations. "One of the earliest points where 
ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone is therefore sooner completed than 
any other of the head, and acquires a predominance which it never loses in the Negro. 
During the soft, pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally 
assume approaches nearly the permanent shape of the American. At birth, the flattened 
face and broad, smooth forehead of the infant; the position of the eyes, rather towards the 
sides of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form, which, 
in the Caucasian, is not obliterated but by degrees, as the child advances to maturity." 
Hamilton Smith, commenting upon these interesting researches, says: "Should the con- 
ditions of cerebral progress be more complete at birth in the Caucausian type, and be 
successively lower in the Mongolic and intermediate Malay and American, with the woolly- 
haired least developed of all, it would follow, according to the apparently general law of 
progression in animated nature, that both — or at least the last-mentioned — would be in 
the conditions which show a more ancient date of existence than the other, notwithstanding 
that both this and the Mongolic are so constituted that the spark of mental development 
can be received by them through contact with the higher Caucasian innervation ; thus 
appearing, in classified zoology, to constitute perhaps three species, originating at different 
epochs, or simultaneously in separate regions ; while, by the faculty of fusion which the 
last, or Caucasian, imparted to them, progression up to intellectual equality would manifest 
essential unity, and render all alike responsible beings, according to the degree of their 
existing capabilities — for this must be the ultimate condition for which Man is created." 80 

From his own researches, Prof. Agassiz concludes that it is impos- 
sible, in the foetal state, to detect the anatomical marks which are 
characteristic of species. These specific marks he assures us become 
manifest as the animal, in the course of its development, approaches 
the adult state. In like manner, the evolution of the physical and 
mental peculiarities of the different races of men appears to com- 
mence at the moment of birth. Dr. Knox, in his recent communi- 
cations in the " London Lancet," already referred to, maintains almost 
the same opinion. He considers the embryo of any species of any 
natural family as the most perfect of forms, embracing within itself, 
during its phases of development, all the forms or species which that 
natural family can assume or has assumed in past time. " In the 
embryo and the young individual of any species of the natural 
family of the Salmonidae, for example," says he, "you will find the 
characteristics of the adult of all the species. The same, I believe, 
holds in man ; so that, were all the existing species of any family to 
be accidentally destroyed, saving one, in the embryos and young of 
that one will be found the elements of all the species ready to re- 
appear to repeople the waters and the earth, the forms they are to 
assume being dependent on, therefore determined by, the existing 
order of things. "With another order will arise a new series of 
species, also foreseen and provided for in the existing world." 

so Nat. Hist, of the Human Species, pp. 176-7. See also Serres' Anatomie Compared. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 237 

If we carefully consider the development of the cranium, it will 
be seen that this development goes on between, and is modified by 
two systems of organs — externally the muscular, internally the 
nervous. The brain exerts a double influence, mechanically or 
passively by its weight, and actively by its growth. That the brain 
completely fills its bony case, is sufficiently well known from the fact 
of the impressions left upon the inner aspect of the cranium by the 
cerebral convolutions and vessels. Very slight allowance need be 
made for the thickness of the meninges. That the progressive 
development of the brain is really capable of exerting some force 
upon the cranial bones surrounding it, is shown in the records of 
cases of hypertrophy of that organ, where, upon post-mortem exami- 
nation, the calvaria being removed, the spongy mass has protruded 
from the opening and could not be replaced. That the bones are 
capable of yielding to a distending force acting from within out- 
wards, is shown in the cases of chronic hydrocephalus, where the 
ventricles are found full of water, the brain-tissue flattened out, and 
the bones greatly distorted. Such a force becomes perceptible in 
proportion to the degree of softness and pliancy of the bones. A 
check to its action will be found in the sutures and in the amount 
of resistance offered by the dura-mater. Now it must be obvious 
that as long as the sutures remain open, and the developmental 
activity of the brain continues, the head must enlarge. If all the 
sutures remain open, this development will be regular and in exact 
proportion to the activity of growth manifested by the different parts 
of the encephalon. When a suture closes, further development in 
that direction will in great measure terminate. Of this proposition 
Dr. Morton gives us the following example : 

"I have in my possession," says he, "the skull of a mulatto boy, who died at the age 
of eighteen years. In this instance, the sagittal suture is entirely wanting ; in conse- 
quence, the lateral expansion of the cranium hiis ceased in infancy, or at whatever period 
the suture became consolidated. Hence, also, the diameter between the parietal protube- 
rances is less than 4.5 inches, instead of 5, which last is the Negro average. The squamous 
sutures, however, are fully open, whence the skull has continued to expand in the upward 
direction, until it has reached the average vertical diameter of the Negro, or 5.5 inches. 
The coronal suture is also wanting, excepting some traces at its lateral termini ; and the 
result of this last deficiency is seen in the very inadequate development of the forehead, 
which is low and narrow, but elongated below, through the agency of the various cranio- 
facial sutures. The lambdoidal suture is perfect, thus permitting posterior elongation; 
and the growth in this direction, together with the full vertical diameter, has enabled the 
brain to attain the bulk of — ■ cubic inches, or about — less than the Negro average. I believe 
that the absence or partial development of the sutures may be a cause of idiocy by check- 
ing the growth of the brain, and thereby impairing or destroying its functions." 81 

81 See a paper on the Size of the Brain in the Various Races and Families of .Man ; with 
Ethnological Remarks; by Samuel George Morton, M. D. : published in "Types of Man- 
kind," by Nott and Gliddon, Philadelphia, 1854, p. 303, note. See also Proceedings of Phila. 
Acad. Nat. Sci. for August, 1841. 



238 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

From the Mortonian collection, other illustrations of this fact might 
be drawn ; but neither space nor time permits their introduction here. 

In the study of the sutures, considerations of a highly philosophical 
character are involved. Their history enables us to perceive why 
the cranium was not formed of one piece, and why there should be 
two frontal and two parietal bones, and only one occipital. Such an 
arrangement obviously allows the fullest development of the anterior 
and middle lobes of the cerebrum, — the organs, according to Carus, 
of intelligence, reflection, and judgment. 82 That the sutures are 
tutamina cerebri, that in the foetus they permit the cranial bones to 
overlap during parturition, and thus, by diminishing the size of the 
head in certain of its diameters, and producing anaesthesia, facilitate 
labor, curtailing its difficulties and diminishing its dangers to both 
mother and child, there can be no doubt. Such provisions are of 
high interest, as exhibiting the harmony of nature. But when we 
call to mind that the skull is a vertebra in its highest known state 
of development ; that the enclosed brain, as the organ of intellection, 
is the distinguishing mark of man ; that the development of the 
cranium goes on pari passu with that of the encephalon ; that the 
various degrees of human intelligence are definitely related to certain 
permanent skull-forms ; and that the cranial sutures, in conjunction 
with the ossific centres, are the guiding agents in the assumption of 
these forms — it will be evident that a higher and far more compre- 
hensive significance is attached to these bony interspaces. Again, 
no extended investigation has been instituted, as far as I am aware, 
to determine the period at which the different cranial sutures are 
closed in the various races of men. The importance of such an in- 
quiry becomes apparent, when we ask ourselves the following ques- 
tions : — 1. Does the cranium attain its fullest development in all the 
races at the same, or at different periods of life ? and 2. To what 
extent are race-forms of the cranium dependent upon the growth and 
modifications of the sutures ? 

"The most obvious use of the sutures," according to Dr. Morton, "is to subserve the 
process of growth, which they do by osseous depositions at their margins. Hence, one of 
these sutures is equivalent to the interrupted structure that exists between the shaft and 
epiphysis of a long bone in the growing state. The shaft grows in length chiefly by accre- 
tions at its extremities ; and the epiphysis, like the cranial suture, disappears when the 
perfect development is accomplished. Hence, we may infer that the skull ceases to expand 
whenever the sutures become consolidated with the proximate bones. In other words, the 
growth of the brain, whether in viviparous or in oviparous animals, is consentaneous with 
that of the skull, and neither can be developed without the presence of free sutures." 83 

82 " Das besondere Organ des erkenuenden, vergleichenden und urtheilenden Geistesleben." 
— Symbolik der menschlichen Gestalt, von Dr. C. G. Carus, Leipzig, 1853. 

83 See article on Size of the Brain, &c, quoted above, p. 303. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 239 

From investigations of this nature, and from other considerations, 
Dr. M. concluded that the growth of the brain was arrested at the 
adult age, that the consolidation of the sutures was an indication of 
the full development of both cranium and brain, and that any in- 
crease or decrease in the size or weight of the brain after the adult 
period would not be likely to affect the internal capacity of the cra- 
nium, which, therefore, indicates the maximum size of the encephalon 
at the time of its greatest development. Combe, however, affirms 
that when the brain contracts in old age, the tabula vitrea of the 
cranium also contracts, so as to keep itself applied to its contents, 
the outer or fibrous table undergoing no change. 84 It is, to some 
extent, true that in the very aged, even when the skull-bones become 
consolidated into one piece, some changes may result from an undue 
activity of the absorbents, or some defect in the nutritive operations. 
Under such circumstances, the cranial bones may be thinned and 
altered slightly in form. Davis gives an example of this change, in 
the skull of an aged Chinese in his collection, in which the central 
area of the parietal bones is thinned and depressed over an extent 
equal to four square inches to about one-third of an inch deep in the 
central part. 85 Such changes, however, are too limited in their extent 
to demand more than a passing notice. 

The pressure of the brain, exerted through its weight, is felt 
mainly upon the base and inferior lateral parts. 

Prof. Engel, in a valuable monograph upon skull-forms, 86 particu- 
larly calls attention to the action of the muscles in determining these 
forms. He considers the influence of the occipito-frontalis as almost 
inappreciable, — so slight, indeed, that it may be neglected in our 
inquiries. The action of the temporal and pterygoid muscles and of 
the group attached to the occiput, though more evident, is still not 
worthy of much consideration. To the action of the musculus 
sterno-cleido-mastoideus, he assigns a greater value. 

" This muscle," says he, "tends to produce a downward displacement at the mastoid por- 
tion of the temporal bone, which will be the more considerable, as the lower point of its attach- 
ment — the sternum and clavicle — is able to offer much greater resistance than the upper. 
In addition to this, the unusual length of the muscle produces, by its contraction, more 
effect, and, hence, favors a greater displacement of the bones to which it is attached. The 
bone upon which it exerts its influence is also very loose in early life, and even during the 
first year of our existence, when extensive motions of the muscle already take place, it is 
not as firmly fixed as the other bones ; hence, it becomes probable that the influence of this 
muscle upon the position of the bones of the skull will be a demonstrable one. 

" It may, however, be admitted & priori, that in spite of all these favorable circumstances, 

84 System of Phrenology, p. 83. 

85 Cr. Brit., p. 6. See also Gall, " Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau," III, 53, 1825. 
ss Op. cit. 



240 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

the displacement will not exceed a magnitude of one, or, at most, three millimetres. With 
this alone, we will, it is true, not yet explain that variety in the form of the skull which not 
only distinguishes one man from another, but has also been characterized as the type of 
progeny and race. Notwithstanding its seeming insignificance, however, this muscular 
action is a very important agent, and plays the principal part in the formation of the skull, 
although other circumstances of an auxiliary or restrictive nature must not be neglected — 
circumstances which may increase, diminish, or modify this displacement. 

" The effect of this muscular action is considerably increased by superadded conditions. 
The head rests upon the condyles of the occipital bone. Partly on account of muscular 
action, and partly from the pressure of the brain, the basal bones of the skull are exposed 
to a downward displacement : the condyloid portions of the occiput, alone, are not. This 
impossibility to change their position parallel with the displacement of the other basal bones, 
is equivalent to an upward pressure of the occipital condyles, and this must considerably 
increase the downward traction of the sterno-cleido-mastoideus. 

" The occipital and temporal regions, then, are subjected to a downward traction, while 
the condyles are pressed upward : moreover, the brain produces, upon all the basal bones 
except the condyles, a downward pressure corresponding to its height; at the partes condy- 
loidea, this downward pressure is obviated by the resistance of the vertebral column." 

Notwithstanding the significance of the facts thus far adduced, it 
has been boldly and unhesitatingly maintained that civilization — by 
which is meant the aggregate intellectual and moral influences of 
society — exerts a positive influence over the form and size of the 
cranium, modifying not only its individual, but also its race-charac- 
ters, to such an extent, indeed, as entirely to change the original 
type of structure. This doctrine finds its chief advocates among the 
writers of the phrenological school, though it is not wholly confined 
to them. Among its most recent supporters we find the Baron J. "W", 
de Muller, who, in a quarto pamphlet of 74 pages, 87 devotes a sec- 
tion to the consideration of the "Action de I' intelligence sur les formes 
de la tete:" 

"Nous espe>ons prouver," says he, "de meme que les formes du crane ont des rapports 
intimes avec le degre' de civilisation auquel un peuple est parvenu, et que par consequent 
elles non plus ne peuvent justifier une division en races des habitants de la terre, a moins 
de classer les hommes d'apres leur plus ou moins d'intelligence, et de justifier ainsi, au nom 
de la supr^matie de la raison, non-seulment tous les abus de l'esclavage,mais encore toutes 
les tyrannies individuelles." 

The subject-matter embodied in the above quotation, though pro- 
fessedly obscure, is beginning to assume a more certain character in 
consequence of the facts brought to light during the controversies 
between the Unitarians and Diversitarians in Ethnology — facts which 
intimately affect the great question of permanency of cranial types. 
Confronted with the facts presently to be brought forward, it will be 
seen that the doctrine of the mobility of cranial forms under the 

87 Des Causes de la Coloration de la Peau et des differences dans les Formes du Crane, 
au point de vue de l'unite' du genre humain. Par le Baron J. W. de Muller. Stutt- 
gart, 1853. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 241 

influence of education, &c, is by uo means a settled fact, as many 
of its advocates appear to think. " Speaking of the great races of 
mankind," very appropriately remarks Davis, "whether it be in the 
size of the brain, or whether in its quality, or whether it be, as the 
phrenologists maintain, in the development of its particular parts, 
each race is endowed with such special faculties of the mind, moral 
and intellectual, as to impart to it a distinct and definite position 
within which its powers and capabilities range. "We know of no 
valid evidence that can be brought forward for thinking this definite 
position can be varied in the mass. We may therefore take this 
further ground for questioning the assumed pliancy of the form 
of skull." 

The indefatigable traveller and "Directeur du Jardin Royal de 
Zoologie de Bruxelles," has condensed in a few pages, at once the 
best and most commonly used arguments to sustain the hypothesis 
which constitutes the starting-point of the above-mentioned article. 
It has appeared to me not inappropriate to devote a few words, in 
this hasty sketch, to the examination of the tenability of the two 
most important examples adduced by Baron M., whose brochure I 
subject to critical inquiry, simply because it is one of the most con- 
cise exponents of a generally-spread, but, as it appears to me, erro- 
neous, and therefore injurious view. And I am the more especially 
urged to this, since the question of the permanency or non-perma- 
nency of human types occupies the highest philosophical position in 
the entire field of Ethnographic inquiry. Its relations are, indeed, 
fundamental ; for, according as it is definitively settled in the affirma- 
tive or negative, will Ethnography — especially the cranioscopical 
branch — assume the dignity and certainty of a science, or be de- 
graded to the vague position of an interesting but merely speculative 
inquiry. "If the size of the brain," says Mr. Combe, in allusion to 
the labors of Morton, as published in Crania Americana, "and the 
proportions of its different parts, be the index to natural national 
character, the present work, which represents with great fidelity the 
skulls of the American tribes, will be an authentic record in whieb 
the philosopher may read the native aptitudes, dispositions, and 
mental force of these families of mankind. If this doctrine be 
unfounded, these skulls are mere facts in Natural History, present- 
ing no particular information as to the mental qualities of the 
people." If there be this permanency of cranial form in the great 
leading or typical stocks — if, in other words, Nature alters not, 
but ever truly and unchangeably represents that primitive Divine 
Idea, of which she is but the objective embodiment and indi- 
cation — then the labors of Blumenbach, Morton, Retzius, ISTilss n, 
16 



242 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Davis, and other cranio scopists, have not been toilfully wrought out 
in vain ; if, however, this permanency is but a dream, if typical 
skull-forms vary in periods of time not greater than the historic, 
then all is confusion and uncertainty, and the labors of the craniolo- 
gist hopeless for good, alike without objects and without results. 

Now a moment's reflection will show that this question of perma- 
nency underlies and in great measure substitutes itself for the fiercely- 
vexed problem of the unity or diversity of human oiigin. 

"S'il est demontreV' says Gobineau, "que les races humaines sont, chacune, enferme'es 
dans une sorte d'individualite' d'ou rien ne les peut faire sortir que le melange, alors la doc- 
trine des Unitaires se trouve bien pressee et ne peut se soustraire a reeonnaitre que, du 
moment ou les types sont si eompletement he're'ditaires, si constants, si permanenis, en un 
mot, malgre' les climats et le temps, l'humanite' n'est pas moins completement et in4branla- 
blement partagee que si les distinctions spe'cifiques prenaient leur source dans une diversity 
primitive d'origine." 88 

After citing the Barabra or Berberins of the Eile-valley, and the 
Jews, in proof of the proposition under consideration, our author 
proceeds to speak of the Turks in the following manner. 

"Les Turcs d'Europe et de 1'Asie mineure nous offrent une autre preuve que la forme 
caracteristique du crane peut se modifier completement dans le cours des siecles. Ce peuple 
nous prfeente le modele d'un type elliptique pur et ne se distingue rien de la masse des 
nations 6urope"ennes. Par contre, il differe tant avee les Turcs de TAsie centrale, que 
beaucoup d'e'crivains le placent au nombre des nations caucasiques, tandis qu'ils rattachent 
les Turcs d'Asie a la race mongole. Or, I'histoire demontre d'une maniere irrefutable que 
ces deux peuples appartiennent au groupe de lAsie septentrionale, avec lequel les Turcs de 
l'Orient conservent les relations les plus intimes, non-seulement au point de vue ge"ogra- 
pMque, mais par la concordance de tous les usages de la vie. La transformation du crane 
a eu lieu non chez les Turcs de l'Asie centrale, mais chez ceux de FEurope. Ceux-ci ont 
perdu peu a peu le type pyramidal de leurs peres et ils l'ont e'change' contre la plus belle des 
formes elliptiques. Or, tout en 6tant les reprtisentants par excellence de cette forme, ils 
sont aussi les consanguins les plus proches de ce peuple hideux aux yeux louches, qui mene 

paitre ses chevaux dans les steppes de la Tartarie Nous devons attribuer cette 

modification du crane aux ameliorations sociales, a la civilisation qui tend toujours a, <5qui- 
librer toutes les anomalies des formes faciales, a niveler toutes les protuberances du crane 
pyramidal ou prognatique et a les mener a la syme'trie du type de l'ellipse. Les Turcs 
orientaux sont Teste's ce qu'6taient les anciens Turcs ; place's sur le meme degrti inf6rieur de 
la civilisation, ils ont conserve le type des peuples nomades." 

The mode of argument here employed appears to be this. In the 
first place it is taken for granted that the Turks are of Asiatic origin ; 
secondly, in consequence of certain unimportant resemblances, they 
are assumed to be affiliated with the Laplanders and Ostiacs through 
what are erroneously supposed to be their Finnic or Tchudic branches ; 
and lastly, as relations of the Lapps, (?) it is inferred that they must 
have originally presented all the Mongolic characters in an eminent 
degree, and been remarkable for low statures, ugly features, &c. 

88 Op. cit, 1. 1, p. 212. 



OF THE RAGES OF MEN. 243 

These premises supposed to be established, a comparison is next 
instituted between the Turks of Europe and of Asia Minor, and a 
conclusion drawn adverse to permanency of cranial types. 

It is of vital importance to cranioscopy, that these arguments 
should be carefully sifted, and examined in detail. It has been re- 
cently shown that at so remote a period as the days of Abraham, 
numerous Gothic tribes occupied those boundless steppes of High 
Asia, which lie outstretched between the Sea of Aral and Katai, and 
between Thibet and Siberia. 89 From the Altai Mountains of this 
region appear to have descended, at this distant epoch, the Orghuse 
progenitors of the Turks. ISTow it is a note-worthy fact, that the 
Oriental writers, though familiar with the European standards of 
beauty, have filled their writings, even at a very early period, with 
the highest eulogies upon the form and features of the tribes inhabi- 
ting Turkestan. 'The descriptions they give of these tribes by no 
means apply to the true Mongol appearance, to be met with on the 
desert of Schamo. Haneberg describes Schafouz, the daughter of 
the Ehakan of the Turks, who lived in the early part of the sixth 
century, as the most beautiful woman of her time. 90 Alexander von 
Humboldt tells us that the monk Rubruquis, sent by St. Louis on an 
embassy to the Mongolian sovereign, spoke of the striking resem- 
blance which the Eastern monarch bore to the deceased M. Jean de 
Beaumont, in complexion, features, &c. " This physiognomical ob- 
servation," says Humboldt, " merits some attention, when we call to 
mind the fact, that the family of Tchinguiz were really of Turkish, 
not of Mogul origin." Further on, he remarks, "The absence of 
Mongolian features strikes us also in the portraits which we possess 
of the Baburides, the conquerors of India." 91 

"The Atrak Turks," writes Hamilton Smith, "more especially the Osmanlis, differ from 
the other Toorkees, by their lofty stature, European features, abundant beards, and fair 
complexions, derived from their original extraction being Caucasian, of Yuchi race, or from 
an early intermixture with it, and with the numerous captives they were for ages incor- 
porating from Kashmere, Afghanistan, Persia, Syria, Natolia, Armenia, Greece, and eastern 
Europe. Both these conjectures may be true, because the Caucasian stock, wherever we 
find it, contrives to rise into power, from whatever source it may be drawn, and therefore, 
may in part have been pure before the nation left eastern Asia, while the subordinate 
hordes remained more or less Hyperborean in character ; as, in truth, the normal Toorkees 
about the lower Oxus still are. All have, however, a peculiar form of the posterior portion 
of the skull, which is less in depth than the European, and does not appear to be a result 
of the tight swathing of the turban. Osmanli Turks are a handsome race, and their chil- 
dren, in particular, are beautiful." 92 

89 Consult, among other works, Humboldt's Asie Centrale, vol. II. ; Ritter's Erdhunde 
Asien, vol. II. ; and Lassen's Zeitschrifl fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. n. 

90 Zeitschrifl fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. I., p. 187. 

91 Asie Centrale,, vol. I., p. 248. See also Gobineau, Sur V InegaliU, $c, Chap. XI. 

92 Op. cit. p. 327. 



244 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Now, the beautiful Osmaulis are the lineal descendants of the 
warlike Seldjuks, who, in the ninth century, suddenly made their 
appearance in Southern Asia, overthrew the empire of the Khalifs, 
and founded the states of Iran, Kerman, and Roum, or Iconium. 
History informs us that these Seldjuks were, by no means, careful 
about preserving the purity of their genealogy ; for it is not difficult 
to adduce instances of their chiefs intermarrying with Arabian and 
Christian women. In short, when we consider that, as a body, they 
were constantly engaged in extensive predatory excursions, during 
which they enjoyed almost unlimited opportunities for capturing 
slaves and amalgamating with them ; that in compliance with the 
invitation of Osman, the son of Ortogrhul, great numbers of the 
adventurous, the discontented, and the desperate, from all the sur- 
rounding nations, fled to his standard, and gradually swelled the ranks 
of the Osmanlis ; that at a later period, the thinning of their num- 
bers in war was avowedly provided for by the capture of slaves ; 
that in the ranks of the Janissaries, a military order instituted in the 
early part of the fourteenth century by Orkhan, one-fifth of all the 
European captives were enrolled ; that for two centuries and a half 
this body was entirely dependent for its renewal upon the Christian 
slaves captured in Poland, Germany, Italy, &c. ; that in the course 
of four centuries, at least half a million of European males derived 
from the above-mentioned sources, and by piracy along the Mediter- 
ranean, had been incorporated into the Turkish population ; — when 
we consider all these, and many other facts of a like nature, we are 
forced to conclude with the erudite Gobineau, that the history of so 
amalgamated a nation furnishes no arguments, either for or against 
the doctrine of permanency of type. 

Further on, and confirmatory of the above remarks, the reader 
will find some allusion to the special character of the Turkish 
cranium, and the marks which distinguish it from the Mongolian, 
Finnic, and other forms of the skull. 

The Magyars are also produced as an example of the mutability 
of cranial form. 

" Bien qu'ils ne le cedent a aucun peuple ni en beauty physique ni en deVeloppenient 
intellectuel, ils descendent, d'apres les indications de l'histoire et de la linguistique com- 
pared, de la grande race qui occupe 1'Asie septentrionale. lis sont du meme sang que les 
Samoiedes indolents, les Ostiacs stupides et dSbiles, les Lapons indomptables. II y a envi- 
ron urille ans, les codescendants de ces peuplades meprisees, les Magyars modernes, furent 
chassis par une invasion de Turcs bors de la Grande-Hongrie, pays avoisinant l'Oural, 
qu'ils habitaient a cette e'poque. A leur tour ils expulserent les races slaves des plaines 
fertiles de la Hongrie actuelle. Par cette migration, les Magyars ^cbangerent un des plus 
rudes climats de Fancien continent, une contre'e sauvage dans laquelle FOstiac etle Samoi'ede 
ne peuvent s'adonner a, la chasse que pendant quelques mois, contre un pays plus meri- 
dional, d'une luxuriante fertility. Ils furent entrainfe it se depouiller peu a peu de leurs 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 245 

moeurs grossieres et a se rapprocher de leurs voisins plus civilises. Apres uu millier d'an- 
n6es, la forme pyramidale de leur crane est devenue elliptique. L'hypothese d'un croise- 
ment general de races n'est pas admissible quand il s'agit des Magyars si fiers, yivant dans 
l'isolement le plus severe. La simple expatriation ne suffit pas non plus pour modifier la 
forme du crane. Le Lapon, issu du meme sang que le Magyar, a comme lui aussi change' 
de demeure ; il vit maintenant en Europe ; mais il y a conserve le type pyramidal de son 
crane avec sa vie de nomade sauvage." 

This asserted transformation of the Samoiede or Northern Asiatic 
type into the Hungarian, in the short space of eight hundred, or, at 
most, one thousand years, stands unparalleled in history. But we 
may ask, if the Magyar has thus changed the form of his head, why 
have not his habits and mode of life changed accordingly ? Why, 
after a residence of nearly one thousand years in Hungary, does he 
still withhold his hand from agricultural pursuits, and, depending 
for his support upon his herds, leave to the aboriginal Slovack popu- 
lation the task of cultivating the soil? Why does he jealously pre- 
serve his own language, and, though professing the same religion, 
refuse to intermingle with his Slavonian neighbors ? Can it be that 
the language, manners, and customs of a people are more durable 
than the hardest parts of their organism — the bony skeleton ? If 
the reader will consult the able essay of Gekando, upon the origin 
of the Hungarians, 93 he will find a simple explanation of these appa- 
rent difficulties. It is there shown by powerful philological argu- 
ments, and upon the authority of Greek and Arabian historians and 
Hungarian annalists, that the Magyars are a remnant of the warlike 
Huns, who in the fourth century spread such terror through Europe. 
Now, the Huns were by no means a pure Mongolic race, but, on the 
contrary, an exceedingly mixed people. In the veins of the so-called 
White Huns, who formed a portion of Attila's heterogeneous horde, 
Germanic blood flowed freely. " In the whole of the high region 
west of the Caspian," says Hamilton Smith, "to the Euxine and 
eastern coast of the Mediterranean as far as the Hellespont, it is 
difficult, if uot impossible, to separate distinctly the Finnic from the 
pure Germanic and Celtic nations." 94 Humboldt, in the Asie Centrale, 
alludes to the Khirghiz-Kasakes as a mixed race, and tells us that, in 
569, Zemarch, the ambassador of Justinian H., received from the 
Turkish chief Dithouboul a present of a Khirghiz concubine who 
was partly white. He Gobineau considers the Hungarians to be 
White Suns of Germanic origin, and attributes to a slight intermix- 
ture with the Mongolian stock their somewhat angular and bony 
facial conformation. 95 

93 Essai Historique sur FOrigine des Hongrois. Par A. De Gerando. Paris, 1844. See 
also Hamilton Smith's Nat. Hist, of Human Species, pp. 323, 325. 
<» Op. cit., p. 325. »5 Op. cit., p. 223. 



246 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

The facts attesting the pertinacity with which the distinguishing 
physical characters of the different races of men maintain themselves 
through long periods of time, and iinder very varying conditions, are 
as numerous as they are striking. The Arabian type of men, as 
seen to-day upon the burning plains of Arabia, or in the fertile 
regions of Malabar, Coromandel, and the islands of the Indian Ocean, 
is identical with the representations upon the Egyptian monuments, 
where, also, we find figures of the prognathous ISTegro head, differing 
not a whit from that type as it now exists. From their original borne 
in Palestine, the Jews have been scattered abroad through countries 
differing most widely in climatic and geographical features, 96 and, in 
many instances, have departed from their primitive habits of life, yet 
under every sky, and in every latitude, they can be singled out from 
amidst other human types. In the streets of San Francisco or Lon- 
don, on the arid wastes of Arabia, and beneath a cloudless Italian 
sky, the pure unmixed Jew presents us with the same facial linea- 
ments, and the same configuration of skull. " J'ai eu occasion," 
writes Gobineau, " d' examiner un homme appartenant a cette der- 
niere categorie (Polish Jews). La coupe de son visage trahissait 
parfaitement son origine. Ses yeux surtout etaient inoubliables. 
Cet habitant du Nbrd, dont les aneetres directs vivaient, depuis 
plusieurs generations, dans la neige, semblait avoir ete bruni, de la 
veille, par les rayons du soleil Syrien." The Zingarri or Gypsies 
everywhere preserve their peculiar oriental physiognomy, although, 
according to Borrow, there is scarcely a part of the habitable world 
where they are not to be found ; their tents being alike pitched on 
the heaths of Brazil, and the ridges of the Himalayan hills ; and 
their language heard at Moscow and Madrid, in the streets of London 
and Stamboul. "Wherever they are found, their manners and cus- 
toms are virtually the same, though somewhat modified by circum- 
stances ; the language they speak amongst themselves, and of which 
they are particularly anxious to keep others in ignorance, is in all 
countries one and the same, but has been subjected more or less to 
modification; their countenances exhibit a decided family resem- 
blance, but are darker or fairer, according to the temperature of the 
cliruate, but invariably darker, at least in Europe, than the natives 
of the countries in which they dwell, for example, England and 

96 We find them scattered along the entire African Coast, from Morocco to Egypt, and 
appearing in other parts of this continent, numbering, according to Weimar, some 504,000 
souls. In Mesopotamia and Assyria, Asiatic Turkey, Arabia, Hindostan, China, Turkistan, 
the Province of Iran ; in Russia, Poland, European Turkey, Germany, Prussia, Netherlands, 
France, Italy, Great Britain, and America, they are numbered by thousands. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 247 

Russia, Germany and Spain. 97 The physical characters of the present 
Assyrian nations identify them with those who anciently occupied 
the same geographical area, and who are figured on the monuments 
of Persepolis, and the has-reliefs of Khorsabad. 

"Notwithstanding the mixtures of race during two centuries," says Dr. Pickering, "no 
one has remarked a tendency to a deveiopment of a new race in the United States. In 
Arabia, where the mixtures are more complicated, and have been going on from time imme- 
morial, the result does not appear to have been different. On the Egyptian monuments, I 
was unable to detect any change in the races of the human family. Neither does written 
history afford evidence of the extinction of one physical race of men, or of the development 
of another previously unknown." 98 

The population of Spain, like that of France, consists of several 
races ethnically distinct from each other. Erom these different strata, 
so to speak, of the Spanish people, have been derived the inhabitants 
of Central and South America. Of these settlers in the New "World, 
Humboldt thus speaks : 

" The Andalusians and Carrarians of Venezuela, the Mountaineers and Biscayans of 
Mexico, the Catalonians of Buenos Ayres, evince considerable differences in their aptitude for 
agriculture, for the mechanieal arts, for commerce, and for all objects connected with intel- 
lectual development. Each of these races has preserved in the New as in the Old World, 
the shades that constitute its national physiognomy ; its asperity or mildness of character ; 
its freedom from sordid feelings, or its excessive love of gain ; its social hospitality, or its 

taste for solitude In the inhabitants of Caraccas, Santa Fe", Quito, and Buenos 

Ayres, we still recognise the features that belong to the race of the first settlers." " 

A remarkable instance of this permanence of physical character is 
shown in the Maragatos or Moorish Goths, whom, Borrow informs 
us, are perhaps the most singular caste to be found amongst the 
chequered population of Spain. 

"They have," says he, "their own peculiar customs and dress, and never intermarry 

with the Spaniards There can be little doubt that they are a remnant of those 

Goths who sided with the Moors on their invasion of Spain It is evident that their 

blood has at no time mingled with that of the wild children of the desert : for scarcely 
amongst the hills of Norway would you find figures and faces more essentially Gothic than 
those of the Maragatos. They are strong athletic men, but loutish and heavy, and their 
features, though for the most part well formed, are vacant and devoid of expression. They 
are slow and plain of speech, and those eloquent and imaginative sallies, so common in the 
conversation of other Spaniards, seldom or never escape them; they have, moreover, a 
coarse, thick pronunciation, and when you hear them speak, you almost imagine that it is 
some German or English peasant attempting to express himself in the language of the 
Peninsula." 100 True to their Gothic character, they have managed to monopolize almost 
the entire commerce of one-half of Spain. They thus accumulate great wealth, and arc 
much better fed than the parsimonious Spaniard. Like men of a more northern clime, they 
are fond of spirituous liquors and rich meats. 

97 The Zincali ; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain. By Geo. Borrow. New York, 
1851, p. 8. 

38 Races of Men. U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. IX., 1848, p. 345. 

W Personal Narrative. i°° Bible in Spain, Chap. XXIII. 



248 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

In another place, Borrow tells us that in the heart of Spain, he 
came across two villages — Villa Seca and Vargas — the respective 
inhabitants of which entertained for each other a deeply-rooted hos- 
tility — rarely speaking when they met, and never intermarrying. 
The people of Vargas — according to tradition, " Old Christians," — 
are light and fair ; those of Villa Seca — of Moorish origin — are par- 
ticularly dark complexioned. 101 Many examples similar to this can 
he pointed out, where a mountain ridge, a valley, or a narrow stream 
forms the only dividing line between races who differ from each other 
in language, religion, customs, physical and mental qualities, &c. 
This is particularly seen, according to Hamilton Smith, in the Keel- 
gherries, the Crimea, the Carpathians, the Pyrenees, the Alps, the 
Atlas, and even in the group of Northern South America. 102 

"The Vincentine district," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "is, as every one 
knows, and has been for ages, an integral part of the Venetian dominions, professing the 
same religion, and governed by the same laws, as the other continental provinces of Venice ; 
yet the English character is not more different from the French, than that of the Vincentine 
from the Paduan ; while the contrast between the Vincentine and his other neighbor, the 
Veronese, is hardly less remarkable." 103 

In a letter, dated United States Steamer John Hancock, Puget 
Sound, July 1st, 1856, and recently received from my friend and 
former school-mate, Dr. T. J. Turner, U. S.K, I find the following 
paragraph, which bears upon the subject under consideration : " On 
each side of the Straits of Juan de Fuca live very different tribes, 
and although the Straits are, on an average, about sixty miles wide, 
yet they are crossed and re-crossed again and again by canoes, and 
no admixtures of the varieties (races ?) has taken place." 

Among other instances of the persistence of human cranial forms, 
Dr. Nott figures, in Types of Mankind, two heads — an ancient 
Asiatic (probably a mountaineer of the Taurus chain), and a modern 
Kurd — which strongly resemble each other, though separated per- 
haps by centuries of time. A still better example of this perma- 
nence of type, and one which involves several peculiar and novel 
reflections as to the relation of the Scythse to the modern Suomi or 
Finns, and through these latter to the Caucasian, or Indo-Germanic 
forms in general, is found in the fact that the skull of a Tchude, 
" taken from one of the very ancient burial-places which are found 
near the workings of old mines in the mountainous parts of Siberia," 
and figured by Blumenbach, is exactly represented in Morton's col- 
lection by several modern Finnic heads. 

™ Op. cit., chap. XLIII. 102 Op. cit., p. 174. "« No. 84, p. 459. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 249 



"Plerasque nationes peculiare quid in capitis forma sibi vindicare con- 
stat." — Vesalius, De Corpor. Human. Fab. 

"Of all the peculiarities in the form of the bony fabric, those of the skull 
are the most striking and distinguishing. It is in the head that we find the 
varieties most strongly characteristic of different races." 

Prichard, Researches, I. 275. 

One of the most difficult problems in the whole range of cranio- 
scopy, is a systematic and accurate classification of cranial forms. 
The fewer the groups attempted to be made, the greater the diffi- 
culty ; since the gradation from one group to another is so insensible, 
as already intimated, that it is exceedingly perplexing to draw sharp 
and exact lines of demarcation between them. A moment's reflection 
will show that a comprehensive group must necessarily embrace many 
skulls which, though possessing in common certain features by which 
they are distinguished from those of other groups, will differ from 
each other, nevertheless, in as many minor but none the less pecu- 
liar characters. The difficulty is increased by the utter impossibility 
of pronouncing positively whether the varieties thus observed are 
coeval in point of time, as the " original diversity" doctrine main- 
tains; whether they are simply so many "developments" the one 
from the other, as the advocates of the Lamarkian system aver ; or, 
finally, whether, as the supporters of the " unity" dogma contend, 
they are all simple modifications of one primary type or specific 
form. Again, as each group or family of man consists of a number 
of races, and these, in turn, are made up of varieties and sub-varieties, 
in some instances almost innumerable, it will be evident that a true 
classification can only result from the careful study of a collection of 
crania so vast as to contain not only many individual representations 
of these races, varieties, &c, but also specimens illustrative of both 
the naturally divergent and hybrid forms. And here another obstacle 
presents itself. As a type is the ideal embodiment of a series of allied 
objects, and as the perfection of this type depends upon the number 
of the objects upon which it is based, the very necessity of a large 
number renders it no easy matter to determine what is typical and 
what is not; or, in other words, what are the respective values of the 
different characters presented by a skull. 

It has not yet been determined how far the physical identity of the 
individuals composing a nation is a proof of purity of race and the 
homogeneity of the nation. Neither is the law demonstrated, in 
obedience to which individual dissimilarities are produced by inter- 



250 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

mixtures of allied races. The first effect of such intermixture is to 
disorder the homogeneity of type by the introduction of divergent 
forms. If the influx of the foreign element is suddenly arrested, 
these abnormal or accidental forms are absorbed into the primary 
type. If the introduction is continued over a long period, the homo- 
geneous aspect of the nation is destroyed, and the physical characters 
of the primary stock, together with those of the disturbing element, 
disappear, as the fusion proceeds to give rise to a hybrid race blend- 
ing the characters of both, and assuming a homogeneousness of its 
own, which, if the fusion were perfect, would very likely lead to the 
supposition of its being a pure form, especially if the history of these 
changes was not made known. A cranioscopist having the skulls of 
such a people in his cabinet, together with specimens of those of the 
primary stocks from which it sprung, could easily assign it a place 
in classification, between the other two, but would be puzzled not a 
little to determine whether it was a primary or secondary form, a 
pure race or uot. A resort to history would here be necessary, just 
as it is with the naturalist. As the latter, by studying the anatomi- 
cal peculiarities of an animal in conjunction with its history, esta- 
blishes its primordial character and durability, so the ethnographer, 
ascertaining the osteologic differentiae of the races of men, and con- 
trasting them with the records of remote, historic times, is enabled 
to point out the durability of certain types through all the vicissi- 
tudes of time and place. In this way, alone, can he discriminate 
primary typical forms from secondary or hybrid — a pure race from 
a mixed breed. 

The thoroughness of the fusion, and the time required to effect it, 
will depend very much upon the degree of difference between the 
parent stocks, and upon the relative numbers which are brought 
into contact. The more closely allied the groups, the more likely 
are they to fuse completely; the more widely separated, the less 
likelihood is there of a perfect intermixture. 

" The amalgamation of races, there are strong reasons for believing, depends chiefly on 
their original proximity — their likeness from the beginning. Where races are remote, their 
hybrid products are weak, infertile, short-lived, prone to disease, and perishable. Where 
they are primitively nearer in resemblance, there is still an inherent law operating and 
controlling their intermixture, by which the predominant blood overcomes that which is in 
minor proportion, and causes the offspring ultimately to revert to that side from which it 
was chiefly derived. As it is only where the resemblance of races is most intimate that 
moral antagonisms can be largely overcome, so it is in these cases alone that we may expect 
to meet with the physical attraction productive of perfect amalgamation ; nature, probably, 
still, at times, evincing her unsubdued resistance by the occurrence of families bearing the 
impress of one or the other of their original progenitors." 104 

104 Crania Britannica, p. 8. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 251 

The aboriginal tribes of Australia are among tbe lowest specimens 
of humanity — the farthest removed from tbe European. Now, ac- 
cording to Strzelecki, tbe women of tbese tribes are incapacitated 
from reproducing with males of tbeir own race, after they have once 
been impregnated by a European. 105 Dr. Thompson, however, ex- 
presses bis doubt of this statement, and denies its truth with regard 
to the New Zealand women. 106 

" II est remarquable que, quoiqu'un grand nombre d'Europe'ens habitent maintenant dans 
les memes contre'es que les Andanienes, on ne mentionne pas encore P existence d'hybrides 
resultant de leur union. Cette circonstance est peut-gtre due a ce que la difference entre 
ces deux extremities de la s^rie humaine rend plus difficile la procreation des hybrides." 107 

Here, then, are the elements of a theory, or rather the indications 
of an unknown physiological law, whose importance is self-evident, 
and whose elucidation connects itself with an allied series of pheno- 
mena. I allude to the instances in which the progeny of the female 
by a second husband resemble the first husband in physical appear- 
ance, temperament, constitutional disease, &c. 

From the above remarks, it will be readily inferred that every 
additional foreign element introduced into a nation will only serve 
to render a thorough fusion more and more difficult. Indeed, an 
almost incalculable time would be required to bring the blending 
stocks into equilibrium, and thus cause to disappear the innumerable 
hybrid forms or pseudo-types. As long as tbe blood of one citizen 
of such a nation differed in the degree of its mixture from that of 
another, diverse and probably long-forgotten forms would crop out 
in tbe most unaccountable manner, as indications of the past, and 
obstacles to the assumption of that perfectly homogeneous character 
which belongs to the pure stocks alone. To be assured of the truth 
of these propositions, we have but to examine with care the popula- 
tion of any large commercial city, as London, Constantinople, Cadiz, 
Sew York, &c. 

If, now, it be true, as Count de Gobineau maintains, in bis philo- 
sophical inquiry into the Cause of National Degeneracy, that a nation 
lives and flourishes only so long as the progressive and leading eth- 
nical element or principle, upon which it is based, is preserved in a 
vigorous state, and that the exhaustion of this principle is invariably 
accompanied with political death, then should the American states- 
man turn aside from the vapid and mischievous party-questions of 
the day — questions whose very littleness should permit them to pass 

105 physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, London, 1845. 

106 British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review for April, 1855. 

107 Des Races Humaines, ou Elements d'Ethnographie. Par J. J. D'Omalius D'Halloy. 
Paris, 1845, p. 186. 



252 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

unheeded — and earnestly compare the historical phases of our youth- 
ful Republic with those of the fallen Greek and Roman empires, and 
the already enfeebled English Commonwealth, that he may learn 
those unalterable laws of political reproduction, evolution, and decay, 
and thus, forewarned, provide intelligently for the amelioration of 
that disease whose seeds were planted when the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was proclaimed, and whose deadly influences threaten, 
sooner or later, like the Lianes of a tropical forest, to suffocate the 
national tree over which they are silently spreading. 

Though war and slavery, those powerful agents in amalgamation, 
have been going on, without interruption, from the earliest recorded 
history of our race down to the present moment, yet certain primary 
types have maintained themselves, amidst every conflict, and under 
the most destructive influences, as vestiges or wrecks of the remotest 
times, and in virtue of a certain inherent and mutual antipathy, as 
old as the oldest varieties of our race. The instability of human 
hybrids is as remarkable as the permanency of the pure stocks. The 
area of the hybrid forms is in all cases limited, and their existence 
devoid of a self-sustaining power. "Where the mixed races are sub- 
jected to a modified climatic influence, they for a while appear to 
maintain themselves, and even extend their locality beyond their 
primary centres of creation ; but, sooner or later, they disappear, 
either through extermination, or absorption by the purer races, or in 
consequence of a mysterious degradation of vital energy. Neverthe- 
less, long after their obliteration, they leave their impress upon the 
conquering and exterminating races, in the shape of modifications 
of the skull, stature, habits, intellectual conditions, &c. In this in- 
stability, this inherent tendency to decay, we discover the great cheek 
to the assumption by the hybrid types of that homogeneity which, in 
all probability, once characterized the primeval groups of man. 

"As it is with individual life, so families, tribes, and nations, most likely even races, 
pass away. In debatable regions, their tenure is only provisional, until the typical form 
appears, when they are extinguished, or found to abandon all open territories, not positively 
assigned them by nature, to make room for those to whom they are genial. This effect is 
itself a criterion of an abnormal origin ; for a parent stock, a typical form of the present 
genus or species, perhaps with the sole exception of the now extinct Flatheads, is, we be- 
lieve, indestructible and ineffaceable. No change of food or circumstances can sweep away 
the tropical, woolly-haired man ; no event, short of a general cataclycis, can transfer his 
centre of existence to another ; nor can any known cause dislodge the beardless type from 
the primeval high North-Eastern region of Asia and its icy shores. The white or bearded 
form, particularly that section which has little or no admixture, and is therefore quite fair, 
can only live, not thrive, in the two extremes of temperature. It exists in them solely as 
a master race, and must be maintained therein by foreign influences ; and the intermediate 
regions, as we have seen, were in part yielded to the Mongolic on one side, and but tempo- 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 253 

rarily obtained, by extermination from the woolly-haired, on the other." 103 Hybrid forms 
cannot be regarded as characteristic of a new race ; amidst all the confusion of blood, "we 
look in vain for a new race. Nature asserts her dominion on all hands in a deterioration 
and degradation, the fatal and depopulating consequences of which it is appalling to con- 
template." 109 

To the cranioscopist, the most interesting point, perhaps, in this 
whole inquiry, is the determination of the particular influence exerted 
by each parent stock upon the formation of the hybrid cranium. 
So much obscurity surrounds this question, however, and the facts 
concerning it are so scanty and conflicting, that I am compelled to 
forego its discussion in this place, and refer the reader to the writings 
of "Walker [Intermarriage ; or, Beauty, Health, and Intellect); Combe 
[The Constitution of Man); Blaine {Outlines of the Veterinary Art); 
Edwards (Des Caracteres Physiologiques des Races Surnames)) Harvey 
{Monthly Journal of Medical Science, Aug. 1854); Berard (Cours de 
Physiologic) ; and particularly, Lucas (Traite Philosophique et Physio- 
logique de V Seredite Naturelle). 

As already intimated, the attempted classifications of the human 
family are as numerous as they are various. Those based upon the 
form of the skull are perhaps the most reliable, since the skull is 
intimately connected with the intellectual organs, and resists, in a 
remarkable manner, the altering influences of climate. Among 
others, the most simple, though in some respects objectionable, is that 
of Prof. Retzius, who, in an essay upon the cranial forms of Northern 
Europe,' 10 divides all heads into Long (Dolichocephalce) and Short 
{Brachycephalcp). Each of these he again subdivides into Straight- 
Jaws (Orthognathy) and Prominent-Jaws (Prognaihcc). The races 
comprised in each of these divisions are seen in the accompanying 
scheme. 

T irl ] / Straight jaws 1 Celtic and Germanic tribes. 

° \ Prominent jaws J Negroes, Australians, Oceanians, Caribs, Greenlanders, &c. 

Short heads / Straight jaws 1 Laplanders, Finns, Sclaves, Turks, Persians, &c. 
\ Prominent jaws / Tartars, Mongolians, Malays, Incas, Papuas, &c. 

Prof. Zetjne, after animadverting upon what he calls the " one-sided 
polarity" of this classification, adopts three main forms or types of 
skull for the Eastern, and three corresponding types for the "Western 
hemisphere, thus dividing mankind into six races, as is shown in the 
subjoined table : m 

108 Hamilton Smith, op. cit., p. 175. 

109 Davis, Cran. Brit., p. 7. 

110 TJeber die Sch'adelformen der Nordbewohner. — Miiller's Archives, 1845, p. 84. 

111 tiber Schiidelbildung, pp. 19, 20. 



254 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

North. 
New World. Old World. 

I. High Skull. 



4. Apalachian, 1. Caucasian, 

or Natchez Race. or Iran Race. 

II. Broad Skull. 



5. Guianian, 2. Mongolian, 

or Carib Race. or Turan Race. 

III. Long Skull. 



6. Peruvian, 3. Ethiopian, 

or Inca Race. or Sudan Race. 

South. 

A serious objection to this division exists in the fact that the so- 
called high skulls, in many important features, differ as much from 
each other, as they do from the broad and long skulls, and this is 
equally predicable of each of these last two varieties, as compared 
with the first. Moreover, the requirements of science discounte- 
nance all attempts at the indiscriminate arrangement of artificially 
deformed with natural skulls. Prichard divides all skulls into 
1. The symmetrical or oval form, which is that of the European and 
Western Asiatic nations ; 2. The narrow and elongated or progna- 
thous skull, of which the most strongly marked specimen is perhaps 
the cranium of the Negro of the Gold Coast; 3. The broad and 
square-faced or pyramidal skull, which is that particularly of the 
Turanian nation. 112 

"Want of space, alone, prevents reference to other systems. How- 
ever, regarding nature as an harmonious and indivisible whole, and 
believing with the venerable Humboldt, that it is impossible to 
recognize any typical sharpness of definition between the races ; 1I3 
and with the eminent German physiologist, Johannes Muller, that 
it is incontestably more desirable to contrast the races by their con- 
stant and extreme forms ; lM and finally, inclining to the opinion so 
ably argued by Gerard," 5 and entertained by Knox, 116 and others, 

112 Researches into the Physical History of Mankind. London, 1836. Vol. I. p. 281. 

113 Cosmos : A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. By Alexander Von 
Humboldt. Translated from the German by E. C. Otte\ New York, 1850. Vol. I. p. 356. 

114 Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen. Bd. II., s. 775. 

115 Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle. Dirige' par M. Chas. d'Orbigny. Art. 
Espece, par Gerard ; t. 5eme. 

i 16 "In time there is probably no such thing as species; no absolutely new creations 
ever took place ; but as viewed by the limited mind of man, the question takes another 
aspect. As regards his individual existence, time is a short span ; a few centuries, or a 
few thousand years, more or less ; this is all he can grasp. Now, for that period at least, 
organic forms seem not to have changed. So far back as history goes, the species of ani- 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 255 

that species occupy no absolutely permanent place in nature's method, 
and that all specific distinctions are, therefore, fallacious — I have 
deemed it more judicious, in the present state of our science, to 
avoid any similar attempt at a classification, preferring to lay before 
the general reader a panoramic view of a few of the almost innu- 
merable cranial forme which the traveller meets with in making a 
tour of the surface of the earth. But, in order to avoid miscon- 
ceptions, a few preliminary remarks will be necessary before pro- 
ceeding with our proposed survey. If, to facilitate our progress, we 
divide the earth's surface into several regions or realms, the limits 
of each being determined by the geographical distribution of its 
peculiar organic forms, and represent each by a cranial form selected 
from among its most numerous and apparently indigenous inhabi- 
tants, we will obtain a series of typical or standard figures, similar to 
those constituting the second column of the extensive "Ethnographic 
Tableau" accompanying this work. With one exception, the crania 
figured in the tableau are contained in the Mortonian collection. 
Taken by means of the camera lucida, in the hands of the accom- 
plished Mrs. Gliddon, I can vouch for the general accuracy of the 
drawings, and their truthfulness to nature. The exception alluded 
to is a drawing of Schiller's skull (C), borrowed from the cranioscopic 
atlas of Carus. Forced by the arrangement of the Tableau to repre- 
sent- the entire European area by two crania instead of many, I 
have selected the above figure because it embraces both Gothic 
and Sclavonic characters, and may be taken therefore as a standard 
for Central and Eastern Europe in general ; while the more elongated 
Circassian skull (D) may be regarded as a not inappropriate repre- 
sentative of Southern and South-eastern Europe. Now it is quite 
evident that all attempts at representing the skull-forms of the 
numerous races of men by a few figures (as in the Tableau), must 
necessarily be imperfect, and consequently open to criticism. I wish 
the reader, therefore, distinctly to understand that the skulls figured 
in the Tableau are merely so many examples, each of a cranial type, 
more or less numerously represented, and prevailing over a greater 
or less extent of the particular geographical area to which it belongs. 
Each figure represents not the whole realm in which it is placed, 
but one only of the characteristic forms of that realm. The Negro 
head (E), for example, is not the standard of the entire African con- 
tinent, but a peculiar form found there, and nowhere else. To 
represent the whole of this continent, many heads would be required. 

mals, as we call them, have not changed; the races of men have been absolutely the same. 
They were distinct then for that period as at present." — Races of Men, p. 34. 



256 THE CEAJSTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

This is true of all the other realms. "With each of the nine figures 
(except that from Carus) the facial angle and internal capacity have 
heen given. The reader will observe, and perhaps with surprise, 
that the Eskimo and Kalmuck heads have the largest internal 
capacity, larger even than the European skulls ; while the Kal- 
muck possesses also the highest facial angle. Let him not be 
misled, however, by this accidental fact. Eor these measurements 
in this instance express individual peculiarities, rather than race- 
characters. Moreover, the heads in question have been selected 
entirely with reference to their external osteological characters. 
The facial angles given by Morton in his Catalogue should not 
be relied upon too implicitly, since they have been taken by means 
of an instrument which, in different, but equally careful hands, 
yields different results for the same head. To measure the facial 
angle with unerring mathematical precision, an accurate photo- 
graphic outline of the head in a lateral view should be first ob- 
tained ; upon this figure the facial and horizontal lines of Camper 
should next be drawn, and the angle then measured with a finely 
graduated protractor. To avoid any further allusion to the cranial 
capacity of the different races of men, I here subjoin the two fol- 
lowing tables, taken from my manuscript copy of the fourth edition 
of Morton's Catalogue. Table I. has been enlarged from that given 
on page viii. of the third edition, by the interpolation of forty measure- 
ments, with the effect of increasing the mean cranial capacity of the 
Teutonic Family, the Mongolian and American Groups by 1.5, 5, 
and 1.3 cubic inches respectively; and slightly diminishing that 
of the Negro Group. Table II. has been constructed from the 
measurements recorded in different parts of the Catalogue. 
(The letters "I. C." mean internal capacity.) 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



257 



TABLE I. — Showing the She of the Brain in cubic inches, as obtained from the internal mea- 
surement of 663 Crania of various Races and Families of Man. 



RACES AND FAMILIES. 



Modern Caucasian Group. 
Teutonic Family. 



Swedes 

Germans 1 
Prussians / 



English . 
Anglo-Americans , 



True Finns . 



Tchudic Family. 



Native Irish , 



Celtic Family. 



Persians.. 
Armenians.. 
Circassians . 



Pelasgic Family. 



Arabs... 
Fellahs- 



Ayras.. 
Bengalees 



Semitic Family. 

Nilotic Family. 

Indosianic Family. 



Ancient Caucasian Gkoup. 

Pelasgic Family. 
Graeco-Egyptians , 

Nilotic Family. 
_ Egyptians 



Mongolian Group. 

Chinese Family 

Hyperborean Family 



Malay Group. 

Malayan Family 

Polynesian Family 



Peruvians . 
Mexicans.. 



American Group. 
Toltecan Family. 



Barbarous Tribes. 

Iroquois 

Lenape 

Cherokee , 

Shoshone\ &c 



Negro Group. 

American-born Negroes 

Native African Family 

Hottentot Family 

Alforian Family 

Australians 

Oceanic Negroes 



no. of 
skulls. 



11 



17 



5 

7 

9 

6 
10 

3 

18 

8 
25 

18 
55 

10 



20 
5 



152 
25 



164 



12 

64 

3 



LARGEST 
I. C. 



SMALLEST 
I. C. 



108.25 

114 

105 

97 

112.5 
97 
94 

98 

96 

91 
90 



97 
96 



98 
102 



97 
90.5 



101 
92 



104 



86 
99 
83 

83 
77 



65 

70 

91 
82 

81.5 

78 

75 

84 

66 

79 
67 

73 

68 



70 

78.75 



68 
82 



58 
67 



69 



73 
65 
68 

63 
76 



93 

95 

96 
90 

94.3 

87 
84 

89 

79 

86 
78 



87 

80 

85 



86 
84.3 



75.3 
81.7 



84 



80.8 
83.7 
75.3 

75 
76.5 



k93.5 



.81.7 



•87 



-85 



■ 80.3 



82.25 



258 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



TABLE II. 
Amebican Crania. 



Barbarous Tribes. 



North Americans. 

Arickarees 

Assinaboins 

Chenouks 

Oregon Tribes 

Cherokees 

Chetimaches 

Chippeways 

Cotonay 

Creeks 

Dacota 

Hurons 

Iroquois 

Lenape 

Lipans 

Mandans 

Menominees 

Miamis 

Minetaris 

Mohawks 

Narragansets 

Osage 

Otoes 

Ottawas 

Ottigamies . ... 

Pawnees 

Penobscot 

Pottawatomies 

Sauks 

S'eminoles 

Shawnees 

Shoshones 

Upsarookas 

Winnebagos 

Tamassees 

Californians 

Miscellaneous, , 
Mound, Caves, 
Uncertain, &c. 

Central American. . . 

South Americans. 

Araucanians 

Brazilians 

Charib 



11 



No. of Skulls 
measured. 



3 
4 
5 
4 
2 
2 
3 
4 
1 
4 
2 
4 
2 
7 
7 
5 
4 
3 
10 
2 

3 
4 
2 
2 
1 
3 
2 
13 
4 
4 
2 
2 
1 
1 

27 

1 

7 
3 

1 



Mean 
I. 0. 



76 

90 

79 

82 

88.7 

79.5 

91 

86 

88.7 

90 

81.5 

96 

79.5 

91.5 

83.5 

84 

86 

86.5 

84 

81 

82.5 

85.6 

81.7 

93.5 

74.5 

80 

91 

90.7 

84 

89.6 

80.7 

94 

89 

70 

87 

84.8 



91 

76 

73.6 

89 



Toltecan Race. 



Peruvian Family. 

Arica 

Pachacamac 

Pisco 

Santa 

Lima 

Miscellaneous 



Mexican Family. 

Tlahuica 

Azteck 

Oturaba 

Tacuba 

Otomie 

Chechemecan 

Tlascalan 

Pames .. ...... 

Miscellaneous 

Modern Mexicans.. 



No. of Skulls 
measured. 



14 

77 

44 

5 

5 

7 

1 
2 
3 
3 
5 
1 
1 
2 
4 



Mean\ 
I. C. 



79 

74.9 

74 

78 

78 

75.5 



84 

80.5 

82.6 

81.6 

76.6 

83 

84 

79.5 

87 

82.6 



*^* If we take the collective races 
of America, civilized and savage, we 
find that the average size of the brain 
as measured in the whole series of 341 
skulls, is but 80.3 cubic inches. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



259 



Upon those outstretched desert wastes which skirt the Icy Sea — 
the frozen tundras of Siberia, and the barren lands of America — 
amidst the snowy islands and everlasting icebergs of the Polar Ocean 
itself, the human family presents us with a cranial form or type, to 
which the learned Prichard has very happily applied the term pyra- 
midal. Amongst all the Hyperboreans, whose life is one continued 
struggle with a stern and rugged nature, the central and far northern 
Eskimos present us with the most strongly marked specimens of this 
type. I have been induced, therefore, to select, as the standard or 
typical representative of Arctic Man, a well-characterized Eskimo 
cranium, procured by that zealous and intrepid navigator, Dr. E. K. 
Kane, during his first voyage to the North, and by him kindly placed, 
along with three other specimens, in the collection of our Academy. 
Through the kindness of Dr. I. I. Hayes and Dr. J. K. Kane, I have 
been' enabled to mature my studies of the pyramidal form over seven 
Eskimo skulls in all, a detailed account of which I hope shortly to 
be able to present to the ethnological public through another channel. 
The following brief resume of the characteristics of an Eskimo cra- 
nium will serve as a commentary upon the accompanying figures, 
which represent the front and lateral views of the head above men- 
tioned (No. 1558 of the Mortonian collection). The male Eskimo 

Fig. 11. 



Fig. 10. 





Lateral view of Cranium. Front view of same. 

Eskimo. 
( From Dr. Kane's First Arctic Voyage. ) 

skull is large, long, narrow, pyramidal ; greatest breadth near the 
base; sagittal suture prominent and keel-like, in consequence of the 
angular junction of the parietal and two halves of the frontal bones ; 
proportion between length of head and height of face as 7 to 5 ; 
proportion between cranial and facial halves of the occipito-mental 
diameter as 4J to 5 ; attachment for the temporal muscle large ; 
zygomatic fossse deep and capacious ; mastoid processes thick and 



2G0 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



prominent; glenoid cavity capacious, and adapted to considerable 
lateral motion of the condyles ; forehead flat and receding ; occiput 
full and salient ; face broad and lozenge-shaped, the greatest breadth 
being just below the orbits ; malar bones broad, high, and promi- 
nent, the external surface looking antero-laterally ; orbits large and 
straight ; zygomatic arches massive and widely separated ; length of 
the face one inch less than the breadth ; nasal bones flat, narrow, and 
united at an obtuse angle, sometimes lying in the same plane as the 
naso-maxillary processes ; superior maxilla massive and prognathous, 
its anterior surface flat and smooth ; superior alveolar margin oval ; 
inferior margin of anterior nares flat, smooth, inclining forwards and 
downwards ; inferior maxilla large, long, and triangular ; semi-lunar 
notch quite shallow ; angles of the jaw flared out, and chin promi- 
nent ; teeth large, and worn in such a manner as to present, in the 
upper jaw, an inclination from without inwards, upwards, and late- 
rally, and in the lower jaw, just the reverse ; antero-posterior diameter 
of cuspids greater than the transverse ; configuration of the basis 
cranii triangular, with the base of the triangle forward between the 
zygomse, the truncated apex looking posteriorly ; breadth of base 
about one-half tLe length ; shape of foramen magnum an irregular 
oval ; anterior margin of foramen magnum on a line with the poste- 
rior edge of the external meati. 117 

The female cranium differs from the male in being smaller, lighter, 
and presenting a smoother surface and more delicate structure. The 
malar bones are less massive, the face not quite so broad, and the 
anterior surface of the superior maxilla concave rather than flat. 

With very slight and insigni- 
ficant variations, this type pre- 
vails along the whole American 
coast north of the 60th parallel, 
and from the Atlantic Ocean 
to Bhering's Straits, ranging 
through 140° of longitude, or 
over a tract of some 3500 miles. 
ISTor does it altogether stop 
here, as is shown in the accom- 
panying figure of a Tchuktchi 
skull — one of three, brought by 
Mr. E. M. Kern from the Island 
Arakamtchetchem, or Kayne, 
at Glassnappe Harbor, Lat. 64° 



Fig. 12. 




TCHDKTCHI. 

(N. Pacific Explor. Exp., U. S. Corvette " Vin- 
cennes," under Capt. Rodgers, V. S. N., 1856.) 



u ' From my unpublished " Descriptions and Delineations of Skulls in the Mortonian Col- 
lection." 



OF THE RACES OP MEN. 261 

40' 1ST., Long. 172° 59' "W. of Greenwich — and by him kindly loaned 
to me for examination and study. The above island forms part of 
the western bank of Bhering's Straits. " The name of the village," 
writes Mr. Keen, " to which the burial-place belonged, whence the 

skulls were procured, is Yergnynne In stature, the (Tchuktchi) 

men are of good height, well built and active. The women are 
generally small, well made, and have exceedingly pretty hands and 
feet. Their mouths are generally large ; the upper lip is full and 
projecting, and the eyes long and narrow." 118 

Leaving the Koriaks, and travelling southward, we next encounter 
the Kamschatkans, a once numerous, though now scanty and mise- 
rable race, occupying chiefly the southern portion of the peninsula 
which bears their name. It has been observed that this people, 
though presenting most of the physical characters common to the 
Polar tribes, are not strictly identical with the latter, as is shown in 
their moral and intellectual character. Stoller was led by their 
physical traits to class them among the Mongolians, while Prichard 
speaks of them as " a distinct race, divided into four tribes, who 
scarcely understand each other." 119 Dr. Morton appears to consider 
them as a hybrid people. " It must be admitted," says he, " that the 
southern Kamskatkans, in common with the southern tribes of Tun- 
gusians and Ostiaks, have so long mixed with the proximate Mongol- 
Tartar hordes, that it is, in some measure, arbitrary to class them 
definitively with either family, for their characters are obviously de- 
rived from both." 12 ° An attentive study of the cast of a Kamtskatkan 
cranium (ISTo. 725 of the Mortonian collection), and comparison with 
Plate LXH. of Blumenbach's Decades, leave little doubt in my mind 
of a sensible departure from the pyramidal type which predominates 
to the north. The cast in question was presented to Dr. Morton by 
Dr. 0. S. Fowler. It is long and flat, and presents quite a different 
proportion between the bi-temporal, longitudinal, and vertical dia- 
meters from what we find in the heads of the true Hyperboreans. The 
low, flat, and smooth forehead is devoid of the keel-like formation 
perceptible in the Eskimo. The carinated ridge makes its appear- 
ance along the middle and posterior part of the inter-parietal suture. 
The widest transverse diameter is near the superior edge of the tem- 
poral bone ; from this point the diameter contracts both above and 
below. As in the Eskimo, the occiput is full and prominent, as is 
also the posterior surface of the parietal bones, which surface, in the 
Eskimo, however, is flat. The forehead inclines upwards and back- 

118 Letter to Mr. Geo. R. Gliddon, dated Washington, Oct. 16th, 1856. 
"» Nat. Hist, of Man, 3d Edition, p. 223. 
120 Crania Americana, p. 52. 



262 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

wards to a prominence in the middle of the inter-parietal suture, 
from which point it is rounded off posteriorly. The face forms a 
broad oval ; the orbits are large, deep, and have their transverse axes 
at right angles with the median line of the face. The malar bones, 
though large, are neither so prominent nor high as in the Eskimo. 
They are laterally compressed, more rounded, and less flared out at 
their inferior margin than in the Polar man. The anterior nares are 
flat and smooth, and the alveolar arch somewhat more prominent 
than in the typical Eskimo, as is shown by comparing them by the 
norma verticalis. Upon examining the basis cranii, we observe, at 
once, the globular fulness of the occipital region, and an alteration 
in the general configuration of the base, as compared with that of 
our Arctic standard. The greatest breadth is not confined to the 
zygomatic region, for lines drawn from the most prominent point of 
the zygomse to the most prominent point of the mastoid process, on 
either side, are parallel to each other. Did space permit, other dis- 
tinctions could readily be pointed out. 

From this description, coupled with the foregoing statements, it 
will be seen that the Kamtskatkans are either a distinct people, occu- 
pying the gap or transitionary ground between the Polar tribes and 
the Mongols ; or, they are the hybrid results of an intermixture of 
these two great groups ; or, finally, and to this opinion I incline, they 
constitute the greatest divergency of which the true Arctic type is 
capable. The cast above described being that of a female, and the 
only one, moreover, to which I can obtain access, I am unable to 
arrive at any more definite conclusion. 

Of the skulls of the Yukagiri, an obscure and very little known 
race, dwelling to the westward of the Koriaks, Morton's collection, 
unfortunately, contains not a single specimen ; nor can I find draw- 
ings of them in any of the many works which I have consulted. 
According to Prichard, as a pure race they are now all extinct, having 
been exterminated in their wars with the Tchuktchi and Koriaks. 121 

Extending along the cheerless banks of the Lena, from the borders 
of the Frozen Ocean as far south as Alden, and occupying the country 
between the Kolyma and Yennisei, we find the Yakuts, or " isolated 
Turks," as Latham styles them, a people who, although surrounded 
by Hyperboreans, contrast remarkably with the latter in language, 
civilization, and physical conformation. These people constitute an 
interesting study for the cranioscopist. They are described as a pas- 
toral race, of industrious and accumulative habits, and manifesting 
a higher degree of civilization than their ichthyophagous Tungusian 
and Yukagyrian neighbors. In consonance with this higher condi- 

i 21 Op. cit, p. 223. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 263 

tion, the skull, as shown in Tab. XV. of the Decades, differs decidedly 
from the prevailing pyramidal form of this region. The reader will 
at once observe, upon referring to that table, the nearly square con- 
tour of the head, approximating the Mongolian type, presently to be 
represented, the large and widely separated orbits, the full and pro- 
minent glabella, the ossa nasi narrow and curving to a point above, 
and the parietal bones projecting laterally. The descriptions given 
by Gmelin and Erman of the Yakuts are, to some extent, confirma- 
tory of the characters above indicated. 

The present remarkable locality of the Yakuts is undoubtedly not 
their original home. Their language is Turkish — intelligible in 
Constantinople — and their traditions, unlike those of their Arctic 
neighbors, point to the South. They afford a singular example of " a 
weak section of the human race pressed into an inhospitable climate 
by a stronger one." 122 Difficulties of classification have been raised 
upon certain slight physical resemblances between the Yakuts and 
the surrounding tribes. These resemblances may be regarded as the 
indirect results of the great Mongolic expansion, which, while it 
crowded the main body of the Turkish population to the South, 
allowed a small portion to escape to the North-East, in the inhospi- 
table region of the Lena, where, intermarriage, to some extent, soon 
followed. We may readily suppose that, in consequence of the 
numerical predominance of the aboriginal inhabitants of these re- 
gions over the new comers, the intermixture resulted in the latter 
assuming, to a certain extent, some of the physical characters of the 
former. But the language of the Yakuts, being more perfect than 
that of the Indigense, has maintained its supremacy. 

Upon the mountainous tract, comprised between the Yennesei 
River and the Okhotsk Sea in one direction, and the Arctic Ocean 
and Alden Mountains in the other, we encounter an interesting 
people, represented by the Tongus in the North and the Lamutes in 
the East. They possess a peculiar language, and, anterior to the 
sixteenth century, appear to have been a powerful race. In his 
physical description of the Tungusians, Pallas says that their faces 
are flatter and broader than the Mongolian, and more allied to the 
Samoiedes, who lie to the west of them. 123 In his Table XVI., Blu- 
menbach represents the cranium of a Northern or Reindeer Tungus. 
Though the characteristic breadth of face below the eyes is preserved, 
and with it, thereby, the lozenge-shaped face, yet Jhe general form 
of the head has undergone some modification. Blumenbach very 
briefly describes this head in the following terms : 

122 Latham, Varieties of Man, p. 95. 

123 Voyages en diverses Provinces, T. 6. 



264 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



" The face flat, and very broad between the zygomatic arches ; the forehead depressed, 
and the nasal openings ample: the occiput remarkably prominent, so that the distance 
between the external occipital protuberance and the superior incisors is equal to nine 
inches." 

The Samoiedes present us with a conformation of the cranium 
approximating more closely to the Eskimo than any of the tribes 
just mentioned. They are conterminous with the Tungus of North- 
Eastern Asia, on the one hand, and the great Tchudic or TJgrian 
tribes of European Russia, on the other. Pallas says of them, " ils 
ont le visage plat, rond, et large." .... "lis ont de larges levres 
retrousees, le nez large et ouvert, peu de barbe, et les cheveux noirs 
et rudes." Tooke ascribes to them " a large head, flat nose and face, 
with the lower part of the face projecting outwards ; they have large 
mouths and ears, little black eyes, but wide eyelids, small lips, and 
little feet." 124 "Of all the tribes of Siberia," says Latham, "the 
Samoiedes are nearest to the Eskimo or Greenlanders in their phy- 
sical appearance." 125 
Blumenbach tells us that a Samoiede cranium in his collection, 

bears a striking resemblance to the skulls 
of native Greenlanders, two of which are 
figured in the Decades. The resemblance 
is shown in the broad, flat face, depressed 
or flattened nose, and general shape or 
conformation of the skull. The nasal 
bones are long and narrow. This head is 
represented in Fig. 13, reduced from Tab. 
LIV. of Blumenbach's series. 

Of all the Northern or Arctic races of 
men, thus hastily passed in review, the 
Eskimo alone appear to exhibit the pyra- 
midal type of cranium in its greatest in- 
tensity. Viewed in conjunction with the 
following statements, this apparently isolated and accidental fact 
acquires a remarkable significance. — On the shores of Greenland and 
the banks of Hudson's Straits, along the Polar coast-line of America, 
and over the frozen tundras of Arctic Asia, on the desolate banks of 
the Lena and Indigirka, and among the deserted Isles of New Siberia 

— visited only at long intervals by the daring traders in fossil ivory 

— everywhere, in fact, throughout the Polar Arch, are found the 
same primitive graves and rude circles of stones, the same stone axes 
and fragments of whalebone rafters - 




Samoiede. 
(Decades, Tab. LIV.). 



•the ancient and mysterious 



124 Russia, III., p. 12, quoted in Crania Americana, p. 51. 

125 Varieties of Man, p. 267. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 265 

vestiges of a people presenting, in general, the same physical charac- 
ters, speaking dialects radically the same, and differing but little in 
manners and customs — a people once numerous, hut now gradually 
hastening on to extinction. Arctic navigators speak of the diminish- 
ing numbers of the Eskimo, and Siberian hunters tell of the disap- 
pearance of entire tribes, such as the Omoki, " whose hearths were 
once more numerous on the banks of the Lena than the stars of an 
Arctic night." The earlier whalers who dared the northern waters 
of Baffin's Bay, often allude to the great numbers of the natives 
seen on the land in this region, and from the recent intrepid seekers 
of the ill-fated Sir John Franklin, we learn that the traces of these 
people increase in numbers with the latitude. Thus, according to 
Osborn, the northern shores of Barrow's Strait and Lancaster Sound 
bear numerous marks of human location, whereas, upon the southern 
side, they are comparatively scarce. He tells us, also, that from the 
estuary of the Coppermine to the Great Fish River, the Eskimo 
traces are less numerous than on the north shore of Barrow's 
Strait. 126 Again, the traditions of the Eskimo point to the north 
as their original home. Erasmus York spoke of his mother as 
having dwelt in the north ; while the inhabitants of Boothia told 
Boss that their fathers fished in northern waters, and described to 
him, with considerable accuracy, the shores of North Somerset. 
When Sacheuse told the natives of Prince Regent's Bay, that he 
came from a distant region to the south, they answered "That can- 
not be ; there is nothing but ice there." 127 So, the natives of North 
Baffin's Bay were ignorant of the existence of numerous individuals 
of their own race, living to the south of Melville's Bay. According 
to Egede and Crantz, the southern Eskimo of Greenland consider 
themselves of northern origin. Their traditions speak of remote 
regions to the north, and of beacons and landmarks set up as guides 
upon the frozen hills of that dreary laud. In connection with these 
facts, consider for a moment the unfavorable physical conditions to 
which the Eskimo is exposed. Guyot thus forcibly alludes to these 
conditions : 

"In the Frozen Regions," says he, "man contends with a niggardly and severe nature; 
it is a desperate struggle for life and death. With difficulty, by force of toil, he succeeds 
in providing a miserable support, which saves him from dying of hunger and hardship, 
during the tedious winters of that climate." And again, "The man of the Polar Regions 
is the beggar, overwhelmed with suffering, who, too happy if he but gain his daily bread, 
has no leisure to think of anything more exalted." 128 

126 Arctic Journal; or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions. By Lieut. S. Osborn. 

127 Ross's First Voyage to Baffin's Bay, p. 84. 

i 2 * Earth and Man. By Arnold Guyot, Boston, 1850, p. 270. 



266 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

In this melancholy picture, nature is seen warring with herself. 
A people forced to protect themselves against the severity of an ex- 
cessive climate by the consumption of a highly carbonaceous and 
stimulant diet, which, sooner or later, begets plethora and its attend- 
ant hemorrhagic tendencies, can scarcely be regarded as a normal 
people, harmoniously adapted to the circumstances by which they 
are surrounded. Yet such is the condition of hyperborean man. 
But here a singular question presents itself. Have the Arctic tribes 
of men always been subjected to the inhospitable climate which, 
at the present day, characterizes the North ? Was there, in other 
words, a time when they enjoyed a climate as mild as that which 
surrounds their cranial analogues — the Hottentots — who roam the 
plains of Kafirland in temperate Southern Africa ? To the recent 
speculations of climatologists, concerning the distribution of tempe- 
rature about the pole, and the probable existence of an open Polar 
Sea ; to the observations of the physical geographer relative to the 
gradual and progressive upheaval of the Arctic coast, and the cli- 
matic changes which necessarily accompanied such alterations in the 
relation of land and water ; and, finally, to the facts and theories 
adduced by the geologist to account for the presence, in very high 
latitudes, of fossil remains, both animal and vegetable — whose living 
representatives thrive in tropical climates only, — must we look for a 
solution of the above curious question, which I introduce here merely 
as one of a connected series of facts and arguments which seem to 
indicate that the Eskimo are an exceedingly ancient people, whose 
dawn was probably ushered in by a temperate climate, but whose 
dissolution now approaches, amidst eternal ice and snow ; that the 
early migrations of these people have been from the north south- 
wards, from the islands of the Polar Sea to the continent and not 
from the mainland to the islands; and that the present geographical 
area of the Eskimo may be regarded as a primary centre of human 
distribution for the entire Polar Zone. 

To this subject I hope to return, in a more detailed manner, here- 
after. 

"We are now in Europe, upon the terra damnata, so graphically 
described by Linnseus, where the Laplander offers himself for our 
inspection, as the only European who in any way, represents the 
Arctic type of cranium. 

The exact position of the Lapps in classification, is still an open 
question. Prof. Agassiz classifies them with the Eskimos and 
Samoiedes. 

"Within the limits," says he, "of this (Arctic) fauna we meet a peculiar race of men, 
known in America under the name of Eskirnaux, and under the names of Laplanders, 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 267 

Samoiedes, and Tchuktshes in the north of Asia. This race, so well known since the 
voyage of Captain Cook, and the Arctic expeditions of England and Russia, differs alike 
from the Indians of North America, from the Whites of Europe, and the Mongols of Asia, 
to whom they are adjacent. The uniformity of their characters along the whole range 
of the Arctic seas forms one of the most striking resemblances which these people exhibit 
to the fauna with which they are so closely connected." 129 

Prichard, relying upon philological evidence — a very unsafe 
guide when taken alone — maintains that the Lapps are Finns 
who have acquired Mongolian features from a long residence in 
Northern Europe. 

"On considere souvent les Lapons," observes D'Hallot, "comme appartenant h la 
famille finnoise, a. cause des rapports que l'on a observes entre leur langue et celle des 
Finnois ; mais les caracteres naturels de ces deux races sont si differents, qu'il me semble 
indispensable de les se'parer. D'un autre cot*;, tous les linguistes ne sont pas d'accord sur 
l'analogie de ces langues, et il est probable que les ressemblances se r^duisent a l'intro- 
duction, dans le langage des Lapons, d'un certain nombre de mots finnois; effet qui a 
ordinairement lieu quand un peuple sauvage se trouve en relation avec un peuple plus 
avanceV' 130 

Latham arranges them, along with Finns, Magyars, Tungus, &c, 
under the head of Turanian Mongolidse. 131 Dr. Morton ohjects to 
this association of Lapps and Finns, and very appropriately inquires 
" how it happens that the people of Iceland, who are of the unmixed 
Teutonic race, have for six hundred years inhabited their polar 
region, as far north, indeed, as Lapland itself, without approxi- 
mating in the smallest degree to the Mongolian type, or losing an 
iota of their primitive Caucasian features?" 132 Indeed, the fact that 
the Lapps, at a remote period, lived in Sweden, and even as far 
south as Denmark, 133 in close juxtaposition with the Finns, is suffi- 
cient to account for any resemblances in physical characters, which 
may be detected between the two. According to Mr. Brooks, the 
Laplanders and Finns "have scarcely a single trait in common. 
The general physiognomy of the one is totally unlike that of the 
other ; and no one who has ever seen the two, could mistake a Fin- 
lander for a Laplander." 134 He proceeds to state that they differ in 
mental and moral characters ; in the diseases to which they are 

129 Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World, and their relation to the dif- 
ferent Types of Man, in Types of Mankind, p. Ixi. 

130 Des Races Humaines, &c, p. Ill, note. m Op. cit., p. 101. 

132 On the Origin of the Human Species, Types of Mankind, p. 322. 

133 ii ii s (i es Lapons) forment une petite peuplade Sparse dans la Laponie, mais il parait 
qu'ils ont 6t6 beaucoup plus developpfe, car on trouve dans la Suede et dans le Danemark 
des ossements d'hommes qui se rapprochent plus des Lapons que des Scandinavcs." 
D'Hallot, op. cit., p. 111. 

134 x Winter in Lapland and Sweden. By Arthur de Capell Brooks, M. A., &c. Lon- 
don, 1827, pp. 536-7. 



268 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

subject, and, according to Prof. Retzius, even the intestinal para- 
sitic worms of the two are unlike. 135 Hamilton Smith remarks that 
the " Finnic race repudiates in national pride all consanguinity with 
the Laplander." 136 Dr. Morton considers the Lapps as unquestion- 
ably Mongolian. Luke Burke, the able editor of the London Ethno- 
logical Journal, appears to adopt another view : 

" The Eskimaux, the Lapp, and the Samoide, are three entirely distinct beings. They 

represent each other . They consequently offer a host of resemblances ; but resemblances 

and affinity are often entirely distinct matters in zoology, though they are constantly con- 
founded, even in cases of the utmost importance The Lapp is entirely European, 

possessing a quite distinct constitution from the Eskimaux and the Samoide, and being 
very much higher than either in the human scale, though still by far the lowest portion of 
the European family. The Samoide is in all respects a Mongolidse. Indeed, he has the 
leading traits of the family even in excess." Is ' 

A critical examination of three Laplander crania, and two casts, 
contained in the collection of Dr. Morton, and a comparison of these 
with a Kalmuck head and a number of Finnic skulls, convince me 
that the Laplander cranium should be regarded as a sub-typical 
form, occupying the transitionary place between the pyramidal 
type of the true Hyperboreans on the one hand, and the globular- 
headed and square-faced Mongol on the other. Just as upon the 
shores of Eastern Asia, we behold the Arctic form passing through 
the Kamtsckatkan and the Southern Tungusian into the Central 
Asiatic type, so in the western part of the great Asio-European 
continent, we behold a similar transition through the Lapponic into 
the Tchudic and Scandinavian types — the most northern of the 
European. 

It is strictly true that the skulls of the Eskimo, Laplander, and 

135 The following curious paragraph, relating to entozoal ethnology, I find in Prof. Owen's 
admirable Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate Animals 
(2d edition, p. 67) : " The Taenia Solium is that which is most likely to fall under the notice 
of the British medical practitioner. It is the common species of tapeworm developed in the 
intestines of the natives of Great Britain ; and it is almost equally peculiar to the Dutch 
and Germans. The Swiss and Russians are as exclusively infested by the Bolhrioeephalus 
latus. In the city of Dantzig it has been remarked, that only the Taenia Solium occurs ; 
while at Kb'nigsberg, which borders upon Russia, the Bolhrioeephalus latus prevails. The 
inhabitants of the French provinces adjoining Switzerland are occasionally infested with 
both kinds of tapeworm. The natives of North Abyssinia are very subject to the Taenia 
Solium, as are also the Hottentots of South Africa. Such facts as to the prevalent species 
of tapeworm in different parts of the world, if duly collected by medical travellers, would 
form a body of evidence, not only of elminthological, but of ethnological interest. In the 
Bolhrioeephalus latus of some parts of Central Europe and of Switzerland we may perceive 
an indication of the course of those North-Eastern hordes which contributed to the sub- 
version of the Roman Empire ; and the Taenia Solium affords perhaps analogous evidence 
of the stream of population from the sources of the Nile southward to the Cape." 

13S Op. cit., p. 321. 

1S ' Charleston Medical Journal and Review, July 1856; pp. 446-7. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



269 



Samoiede are not identical, in the fullest sense of the word. Neither 
are the localities of these people. The various portions of the so-called 
Arctic realm, of Agassiz, do not accord precisely in geographical and 
climatic conditions. Arctic America and Asia more closely resemble 
each other than they do Arctic Europe. The same thing is true, of the 
skulls, and of the organism generally, of their human inhabitants. A 
deeply indented sea-border ; direct and positive relations to the Gulf 
Stream which divides upon the Norwegian coast into two great cur- 
rents, bathes and tempers the whole north-western shore, and supplies 
an immense body of warm, humid air, which serves to ameliorate the 
otherwise extremely harsh and rugged climate ; a range of lofty moun- 
tains running parallel with the western coast, and acting as great con- 
densers of atmospheric vapor ; — such are the physical peculiarities 
which give to Lapland-Europe an organic physiognomy somewhat 
different from other sections of the Arctic realm. In this region the 
tree-limit obtains its highest northern position in lat. 70°-71° N., and 
if we trace this line eastward, on a physical chart, we will find that, 
under the influence of a continental climate, it recedes towards the 
Equator, until in Kamtsehatka it reaches the ocean in 58° N. latitude. 
So that while in a considerable portion of Lapland we find a wooded 
region, in Asia it will be observed that a large part of the country of 
the Samoiedes and Tungus, and the whole of that of the Koriaks, 
Yukagirs and Tchuktchi, lie to the north of the wooded zone. Upon 
the American continent, which is colder under the same parallels 
than the Asiatic — in consequence of the presence of a greater quan- 
tity of land in these high latitudes — the Eskimo live entirely in a 
treeless region. The distribution of the bread-plants in Northern 
America, Europe, and Asia, reveals to us similar irregularities. We 
need not be surprised, therefore, if, in harmony with these varying 
physical and organic conditions, we should 
find the Lapland cranium differing more 
from those of the Eskimo and Samoiede 
than these two do from each other. 

The skull here figured is reduced from 
Tab. XLIII. of the Decades. Blumen- 
bach describes it as "large in proportion 
to the stature of the body ; the form and 
appearance altogether such as prevail in 
the Mongolian variety ; the calvaria almost 
globose ; the zygomatic bones projecting 
outwards; the malar fossa, plane ; the fore- 
head broad; the chin slightly prominent Laplander. 



Fig. 14. 




270 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

and acuminated ; the palatine arch level ; the fissure in the floor of 
the orbit very large." 

Turning our backs upon the Frozen Ocean, and tracing to their 
sources the three great rivers — the Obi, Yennisei, and Lena — which 
drain the slopes of Northern Asia, we gradually exchange the region 
of tundras and barren plains, for elevated steppes or table-lands, the 
region of the reindeer and dog for that of the horse and sheep, the 
region whose history is an utter blank for one which has witnessed 
such extensive commotions and displacements of the great nomadic 
races, who, probably, in unrecorded times, dwelt upon the central 
plateaux of Asia, before these had lost their insular character. Tra- 
velling thus southward, we further remark that a globular conforma- 
tion of the human skull replaces the long, narrow, pyramidal type of 
the North. 

In our attempt to exhibit a general view of the cranial forms or 
types of Central Asia, I deem it best to direct attention to the region 
of country which gives origin to the Yennisei, about Lake Baikal, 
and in the Greater Altai chain, south of the TJriangchai or Southern 
Samoiedes. For we here encounter, in the Kalkas and Mongolians 
proper of the desert of Shamo, a type of head which is distinct from 
that of the Hyperboreans, and to which the other great nomadic races 
are related, in a greater or less degree. I have selected, as the most 
fitting representative of this Asiatic type or form, the cranium of a 
Kalmuck (No. 1553 of the Mortonian Collection), sent to the Aca- 
demy by Mr. Cramer, of St. Petersburg, shortly after the decease of 
Dr. Morton. This skull is chosen as a standard for reference, on 
account of the " extent to which the Mongolian physiognomy is the 
type and sample of one of the most remarkable divisions of the 
human race." 138 Moreover, the Mongols possess the physical cha- 
racters of their race in the most eminent degree, 139 they are the most 
decidedly nomadic, and their history, under the guidance of Tchengiz- 
Khan and his immediate successors, constitutes a highly-important 
chapter in the history of the world ; and, finally, because they occupy 
the centre of a well-characterized and peculiar floral and faunal re- 
gion, extending from Japan on the east to the Caspian on the west. 

In the accompanying figure, the reader will observe that the cra- 
nium is nearly globular, while the forehead is broad, flat, and less 
receding than in the Eskimo and Kamtskatkan. Without being 

138 Latham, Varieties of Man, p. 63. 

139 " It is easy," says Pallas, " to distinguish, by the traits of physiognomy, the principal 
Asiatic nations, who rarely contract marriage except among their own people. There is 
none in which this distinction is so characterized as among the Mongols." See Prichard's 
Nat. Hist, of Man, p. 215. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



271 




ridged or keel-like, the medium line K S- 15 - 

of the cranium forms a regular arch, 
the most prominent point of which 
is at the junction of the coronal and 
sagittal sutures. Behind and above 
the meatus, the head swells out into 
a globe or sphere, instead of tapering 
away postero-laterally towards the 
median line, as in the Eskimo cra- 
nia. This appearance is also well 
seen in the head figured by Blumen- 
bach. 140 He says of it, "habitus to- 
tius cranii quasi iiiflatus et tumidus." 

The eye at once detects the striking difference between the facial 
angle of this cranium and that of the Eskimo above figured. In the 
latter, the facial bones resemble a huge wedge lying in front of the 
head proper. This appearance, it is true, is somewhat dependent 
upon the obtuseness of the angle of the lower jaw, but mainly, as 
will be seen, upon the prominent chin and prognathous jaw. In the 
Kalmuck, the facial bones form a sort of oblong figure, and are by 
no means so prominent. The face is broad, flat, and square; the 
superciliary ridges are massive and prominent ; the orbits are large, 
and directed somewhat outwards ; the ossa nasi are broad and rather 
flat, forming an obtuse angle with each other ; the malar bones are 
large, strong, protuberant, and roughly marked. 

The impropriety of classifying the Eskimo, Samoiedes, &c, along 
with the Mongols — an error which pervades many of the books — 
is clearly manifested, I think, by the above figure and description. 
IT we apply the term Mongolian to the Eskimo, then we must seek 
some other epithet for the Kalmuck. The heads of the two races 
contrast strongly. The one is long and narrow, the face very broad, 
flat, and lozenge-shaped, and decidedly prognathous ; the other is 
globular, swelling out posteriorly, while the face is broad, fiat, and 
square. On the other hand, Prichard has very properly observed, 
that " the Mongolian race decidedly belongs to a variety of the human 
species, which is distinguished from Europeans by the shape of the 
skull." 141 

Morton's collection contains, also, a cast of the skull of a Burat 
Mongol, 142 in which the above characters are readily distinguished. 

»o Table XIV. of the Decades. ™ Nat. Hist, of Man, p. 214. 

112 The Bouriats, dwelling about Lake Baikal, manifest more aptitude for civilization than 
either the Kalmucks or the Mongols proper. Tchihatcheff informs us that the Russian 
Government employs, in frontier service, several regiments of these people, "who have been 



272 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

These characters agree perfectly with, those represented in Tab. 
XXIX. of the Decades, and in Fischer's Osteological Dissertation. 10 
The descriptions, given by travellers, of the Mongolic physiognomy, 
correspond very well with the foregoing observations upon the 
cranium. 

" The Mongols and Bouriats have so great a resemblance to them" (the Kalmucks), says 
Pallas, " both in their physiognomy, and in their manners and moral economy, that what- 
ever is related of one of these nations will apply as well to the others The charac- 
teristic traits in all the countenances of the Kalmucks, are eyes, of which the great angle, 
placed obliquely and downwards towards the nose, is but little open and fleshy ; eyebrows 
black, scanty, and forming a low arch ; a particular conformation of the nose, which is 
generally short, and flattened towards the forehead ; the bones of the cheek high ; the head 
and face very round. They have also the transparent cornea of the eye very brown ; lips 
thick and fleshy ; the chin short ; the teeth very white : they preserve them fine and sound 
until old age. They have all enormous ears, rather detached from the head." 144 

Between the Caspian Sea on the west, and the Great Altai Moun- 
tains on the east, and between the parallel of Tobolsk on the north, 
and the head-waters of the Oxus on the south, lies a country, whose 
physical aspects are not more interesting to the geologist and the 
physical geographer, than are its human inhabitants to the ethno- 
grapher. In this region we are called upon to study an extensive 
steppe, intersected with lofty mountains, among which are the feeding 
springs of many large rivers. Over this steppe, and among these 
mountains, have wandered, from the remotest times, a distinct and 
peculiar type of people, who have played a most important part in 
the history of the world — a people who had established, centuries 
ago, a vast empire in the heart of Asia, having China for its eastern, 
and the Caspian Sea for its western border', and who, when pressed 
towards the south-west by their nomadic neighbors, the Mongols, 
in their turn fell, with devastating fury, upon Europe, and long held 
its eastern portions in subjection. I allude to the Turkish family, 
whose history would be replete with interest, even if it offered us but 
the single fact, that the Turks, like the Goths of Europe and the 
Barbarian Tribes of North America — races occupying, in their re- 
spective countries, about the same parallels of latitude — were selected 
at a former period, to break in upon the high, but at that time lethar- 
gic, civilization of a more southern clime. "In the Yakut country 
we find the most intense cold known in Asia ; in Pamer the greatest 
elevation above the sea-level ; in the south of Egypt, an inter-tropical 
degree of heat. Yet in all these countries we find the Turk." U5 

well organized and disciplined after the European system. See his Voyage dans V Altai 
orientate, p. 190. 

143 Dissertatio Osteologica de Modo quo Ossa se vicinis accommodant Partibus. Ludg. 
Bat. 1713, 4to., tab. 1. 

144 Quoted from Prichard, op. cit., p. 215. 145 Latham, op. cit., p. 77. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 273 

It is while studying the physical characters of this intei'esting 
people, that the cranioscopist, in view of the little attention which 
his favorite science has received, and the scanty materials, therefore, 
by which he is guided, is forced to exclaim, in the language of St. 
Augustine, "Mirantur homines altitudines montium, ingentes fluctus 
maris, altissimos lapsus numinum et oeeani ambitum et gyros siderum 
et relinquunt se ipsos, nee mirantur." 

Much discrepancy of opinion exists with regard to the origin, 
homogeneity, and characteristic physical conformation of the Turkish 
family. In consequence of the application of the term Tartar, their 
origin has been assigned to the tribes of Lake Bouyir, in East Mon- 
golia. Remusat, Klaporth, and Ritter regard them as descendants 
of the Hiong-lSTu, who, prior to the Christian Era, threatened to 
overrun and subjugate China with their mighty hordes. Pkichard 
is inclined to consider this opinion unquestionable. 146 D'Omalius 
D'Halloy classifies them along with the Finns and Magyars, as de- 
scendants or representatives of the ancient Scythse. 1 " Latham makes 
a remark which evinces a concurrence of opinion — " A large, perhaps 
a very large portion of the Scythse must have been Turk ; and if so, 
it is amongst the Turks that we must look for some of the wildest 
and fiercest of ancient conquerors." On a preceding page he ob- 
serves, "Practically, I consider that the Mongoliform physiognomy 
is the rule with the Turk, rather than the exception, and that the 
Turk of Turkey exhibits the exceptional character of his family."" 3 

Much of this difference of opinion appears to result from the nota- 
ble fact that, in traversing the Turkish area, we encounter different 
types of countenance and of physical conformation generally. In 
the absence of an adequate collection of crania representing the 
numerous tribes composing this family — which collection would be 
of the greatest utility in deciding this mooted point — we are forced 
to adopt, by way of explanation, one or other of the three following 
suppositions : — Either the typical Mongolian of Eastern Asia passes, 
by certain natural transitionary forms, — displayed by the tribes of 
Turkish Asia — into the European type ; or, the Turk once possessed 
a peculiar form, standing midway between that of the European and 
Mongol, the intervening sub-types or forms having resulted from a 
double amalgamation on the part of the Turk ; or, lastly, we must 
recognise in the Mongolian form a primitive type, which, by amal- 
gamation with the European, has begotten the Turk. The second 
of these propositions appears to me the most tenable. However, as 
Dr. Morton's collection contains no skulls of the Turkish tribes, I 

i« Nat. Hist, of Man, p. 209. "' Des Races Humaines, p. 83. 

1 48 Varieties of Man, pp. 78-9. 
18 



274 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



Fig. 16. 




have not the necessary data to arrive at a positive conclusion as to 
the existence of a primary and peculiar cranial type among the 

Turks. Nevertheless, if the reader will 
carefully inspect the accompanying figure 
of a Turkish cranium in the Blunienba- 
chian collection, and compare it with our 
Kalmuck standard, I deem it highly pro- 
bable that he will with me recognize for 
the Turkish region a sub-typical form, 
which, though closely related to the Mon- 
golic, differs from it mainly in possessing 
a more oval face, and a more decidedly 
globular skull. Blumenbach thus de- 
Ttok. scribes the head in his possession: 

" The cranium is nearly globular ; the foramen magnum is placed almost at the posterior 
end of the basis cranii, so that there seems to be no occiput ; the forehead broad ; the 
glabella prominent; the malar fossa? gently depressed, and the proportions of the face, 
upon the whole, symmetrical and elegant. The external occipital protuberance is but little 
developed ; the occipital condyles very large and convex ; the alveolar edge of the superior 
maxilla very short, so that just beneath the nose it scarcely equals in height the breadth 
of the little finger." 

Judging from the accounts of travellers, it would seem that among 
the most Eastern of the Turkish races, such as the Kirghis of Bal- 
kash and the irreclaimable nomades of the dreary plains of Turkistan, 
the Mongolic physiognomy more especially predominates. This, it 
will be recollected, is the region in which the Mongols proper and 
the Turks meet and overlap. The skull of a Kirghis, figured by 
Blumenbach (Tab. XLTI.) furnishes a good exemplification of the 
cranial form of this region. In a Don Cossack (Tab. IY.) the Mon- 
golian tendency is equally manifest. The Yakuts of the Lena, before 
described, and the Nbjai Tartars (judging from a figure in Hamilton 
Smith's work), also belong to this type. 149 South of the Kirghis are 
the Uzbecks, who, according to Lieut. Wood, resemble the former, 
but are better proportioned. The reader will obtain some general 
idea of the points of resemblance and difference between the Uzbecks 
and their Eastern conquerors/ by referring to the portrait of Sjah 
Mierza, an Uzbeck Tartar, in the "Ethnographic Tableau" illus- 
trating Mr. Gliddon's Chapter VI. 

Through the skulls of the Osmanli Turks and the Tartars of the 
Kasan — especially the latter — the Turkish head proper graduates 



«= Op. cit., plate 9, fig. 2. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



275 



into the European form 
anciently civilized of the race. The 
high European forms so often seen 
among the Osmanlis are no longer pro- 
blematic. A knowledge of the hete- 
rogeneous additions accepted' by their 
Seldjukian ancestors, and already re- 
ferred to in sufficient detail, has served 
not a little to dissipate the mystery 
attached to this subject. Of the genea- 
logical impurity of the Turks I think 
there can be but little doubt. Their 
indiscriminate amalgamations are thus 
briefly hinted at by D'Halloy : 



Both these tribes are among the most 



Fig. 17. 




Tartar. 



"Tl parait," says he, "d'apres les portraits d'anciens peuples turos, que Ton a trouve's 
dans les historiens chinois, que ces peuples avaient originairement des cheveux roussatres, 
et que leurs yeux 6taient d'un gris verdatre ; mais ces caracteres se sont perdus, et main- 
tenant on remarque que les Turcs qui habitent au nord-est du Caucase, participent plus ou 
moins des caracteres des Mongols, et que ceux e^ablis au sud-ouest pr£sentent les formes 
de la race blanche d'une maniere trfe-prononce'e, mais avec des cheveux et des yeux noire ; 
circonstances qui s'expliquent par le melange avec les Mongols pour les premiers, et par 
celui avec les Perses et les Aranie'ens pour les seconds, d'autant plus que les Turcs, qui 
sont ge'ne'ralement polygames, ont beaucoup de gout pour les femmes (itrangeres." 15 ° 

Quite recently, Major Alexander Cunningham, of the Bengal 
Engineers, has given us an excellent account of the physical charac- 
ters of the Bhotiyahs, an interesting race occupying a considerable 
portion of Thibet and the Himalayan range of mountains. 

"The face of the Boti," says he, "is broad, flat, and square, with high cheek-bones, 
large mouth, and narrow forehead. The nose is broad and flat, and generally much turned 
up, with wide nostrils, and with little or no bridge. The eyes are small and narrrow, and 
the upper eyelids usually have a peculiar and angular form that is especially ugly. The 
eyes are nearly always black; but brown, and even blue eyes, are seen occasionally. The 
inner corners are drawn downwards by the tension of the skin over the large cheek-bones ; 
the eyelids are therefore not in one straight line, parallel to the mouth, as is the case with 
Europeans, but their lines meet in a highly obtuse angle pointing downwards. This gives 
an appearance of obliquity to the eyes themselves that is very disagreeable. The ears are 
prominent, very large, and very thick; they have also particularly long lobes, and are 
altogether about one-half larger than those of Europeans. The mouth is large, with full 
and somewhat prominent lips. The hair is black, coarse, and thick, and usually straight 
and crisp. Bushy heads of hair are sometimes seen, but I believe that the frizzly appear- 
ance is not due even in part to any natural tendency to curl, but solely to the tangled and 
thickly agglomerated matting of the hair consequent upon its never having been combed or 
washed from first to second childhood." 151 

iM Op. cit., pp. 89, 90. 

161 Ladak, Physical, Statistical, and Historical, with Notices of the Surrounding Countries, 
London, 1854, p. 296. 



276 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

A Penjur of Lhassa is thus described by Hodgson : 

" Face moderately large, sub-ovoid, widest between angles of jaws, less between 

cheek-bones, which are prominent, bnt not very. Forehead rather low, and narrowing some- 
what upwards ; narrowed also transversely, and much less wide than the back of the head. 
Frontal sinus large, and brows heavy. Hair of eye-brows and lashes sufficient ; former not 
arched, but obliquely descendent towards the base of nose. Eyes of good size and shape, 
but the inner angle decidedly dipt, or inclined downwards, though the outer is not curved 
up. Iris a fine, deep, clear, chestnut-brown. Eyes wide apart, but well and distinctly 
separated by the basal ridge of nose, not well opened, cavity being filled with flesh. Nose 
sufficiently long, and well raised, even at base, straight, thick, and fleshy towards the end, 
with large wide nares, nearly round. Zygomte large and sabent, but moderately so. Angles 
of the jaws prominent, more so than zygomte, and face widest below the ears. Mouth 
moderate, well-formed, with well-made, closed lips, hiding the fine, regular, and no way 
prominent teeth. Upper lip long. Chin rather small, round, well formed, not retiring. 
Vertical line of the face very good, not at all bulging at the mouth, nor retiring below, and 
not much above, but more so there towards the roots of the hair. Jaws large. Ears mode- 
rate, well made, and not starting from the head. Head well formed and round, but longer 
H parte post than a parte ante, or in the frontal region; which is somewhat contracted cross- 
wise, and somewhat narrowed pyramidally upwards Mongolian cast of features 

decided, but not extremely so ; and expression intelligent and amiable." 152 

Klaporth has shown that a general resemblance prevails between 
the languages of the Turk, Mongolian, and Tungusian. The fore- 
going remarks upon the cranial characters of these people, are, to 
some extent, confirmatory of the slight affinity here supposed to be 
indicated. The Turk and Mongol, however, appear to me to be 
more related to each other than to the Tungusian, whose cranial 
conformation must rather be regarded as transitionary from the 
pyramidal type. Indeed, the Tungusian tribes seem to connect the 
Chinese with the frozen Worth ; for, in a modified degree, the same 
differences which separate the true Hyperborean from the typical 
Mongol, also separate the Chinese from the latter. In other words, 
the Chinese nation, in the form of their heads, resembles the great 
Inuit family more than the Mongolian. This opinion is based upon 
the critical examination of eleven Chinese skulls, obtained from 
various sources, and now comprised in the Mortonian collection. 

If we compare together the lateral or profile view of the Eskimo 
(Fig. 10) with that of a Chinese (ISTo. 94 in Morton's'collection — the 
head of " one of seventeen pirates who attacked and took the French 
ship 'Le aSTavigateur,' in the China Sea"), it will be seen that they 
both present the same long, narrow form, appearing as if laterally 
compressed. In both the temporal ridge mounts up towards the 
vertex, and in both a large surface is presented for the attachment 
of the temporal muscle. In both the forehead is recedent, and the 
occiput prominent. But, while in the Eskimo (and this is a charac- 

162 Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xvii., part 2, p. 222. See also Prichard's 
Nat. Hist, of Man, edited by Edwin Norms, vol. I. p. 219. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



277 




Chinese (No. 94). 



teristic feature) the greater portion Fl §- 18 - 

of the malar surface looks ante- 
riorly, thus giving the dispropor- 
tionate sub-orbital breadth to the 
face ; in the Chinese, on the con- 
trary, I find that the greater por- 
tion of this surface looks laterally, 
the zygomatic arches not being 
separated so widely. Hence, the 
greatest transverse diameter of 
the base of the Chinese cranium 
does not fall in the anterior re- 
gion between the zygomse, as we 
have seen to be the case in the 
Eskimo cranium. It should be observed, moreover, that the jaw is 
more rounded and less massive in the latter than in the former. In 
the Chinese, the chin is more acuminated ; but it is a curious fact 
that in both we have the same prognathous character of the upper 
jaw. "When we compare the two facially, we become aware that 
they differ, not only in breadth of face, but also in that particular 
element which helps to give to the face of the Eskimo its diamond 
or lozenge shape. In this latter, the forehead is flat, narrow, and 
triangular ; in the Chinese, a broader, less flat, and square forehead 
changes the character of the face, as is shown in all the specimens 
which I have examined, especially in ISTos. 426 and 427 of Morton's 
collection. Other features equally interesting I might point out, but 
my space does not permit, and, moreover, I hope to be able to return 
to this inquiiy in a future publication. On page 45 of the Crania 
Americana, I find the following description, from the pen of Dr. 
Morton : 



" The Chinese skull, so far as I can judge from the specimens that have come under my 
inspection, is oblong-oval in its general form ; the os frontis is narrow in proportion to the 
width of the face, and the vertex is prominent: the occiput is moderately flattened; 153 the 
face projects more than in the Caucasian, giving an angle of about seventy-five degrees; 
the teeth are nearly vertical, in which respect they differ essentially from those of the 
Malay ; and the orbits are of moderate dimensions and rounded." 

Blanchard thus alludes to the Chinese cranium : 

" Dans les cranes de Chinois, 154 la face vue par devant est allonge's ; elle n'a plus ces 
cotes paralleles que nous avons signaled dans les races oceaniques, elle s'amincit graduelle- 
ment vers le bas. Le coronal est large ; mesurf dans sa plus grande e'tendue, la largeur 
equivaut a peu pres a la hauteur, prise de I'origine des os nasaux a sa jonction avec les 



153 This feature I cannot detect in any of the above-mentioned eleven skulls. 

154 PI. 43 of Dumoutier'a Atlas. 



278 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

parietaux sur la ligne mediane. Observe par devant, on voit clairement, que sans affeeter 
la forme vraiment pyramidale propre aux Polynesiens et un peu aux Malayo-Polynesieus, il 
se retrecit graduellement vers le sommet. Vu de profil, le front se montre en general assez 
rejete en arriere. Le maxillaire superieur est assez etroit et assez allonge ; le maxillaire 
inferieur est egalement etroit, comparativenient an developpement de la portion superieure 
de la tete. Les os maxillaires sont assez proeminents comme on peut s'en rendre compte 
aisdment en considerant une tete de Chinois par le profil. La region occipitale s'etend peu 
en arriere. Ces caracteres se voient nettement dans les tetes representees par M. Dumou- 
tier, et nous les avons retrouvds dans plusieurs sujets qui existent dans la collection anthro- 
pologique du Museum d'histoire naturelle de Paris. 

"Si nous comparons ces tetes de Chinois avec celles des habitants des Philippines, 155 
les differences sont bien palpables, et pourtant il y a une grande analogie dans la forme 
gendrale, dans le contour coronal observe par devant. La face, chez les Chinois, est beau- 
coup plus allongee ; le front, vu de profil, est moins oblique, ce qui donne necessairement 
plus d'ampleur a, la partie autero-superieure de la tete ; les os niaxillaires sont aussi sensi- 
blement moins avancds : de la un angle facial un peu plus onvert. Enfin, dans tous les 
cas, la partie posterieure de la tete est un peu moins allongee. 

" De ces faits il resulte que la tete des Chinois, tres-analogue sons bien des rapports a, 
celle des Malais, en differe d'une facon notable et se rapproche d'autant du type europeen. 
Mais lorsq'on vient a. mettre en presence les cranes de Chinois et d'Europeens, c'est une 
difference bien autrement importante qui se manifeste devant des yeux exerces a, ce genre 
d'etude. Un naturaliste de la Hollande, M. Vander Hqsven, a deja indique plusieurs 
differences dans les proportions du crane. 156 Chez le Chinois, la face est plus longue que 
chez 1'Europeen, 15 ' Tangle facial est bien moins ouvert, le coronal deprime, sauf une ligne 
courbe presqne reguliere de la base au sommet, tandis que dans la tete de TEuropeen, le 
front est presqne droit et forme presque un coude au sommet, pour aller rejoindre les 
parietaux ; tout cela, sans doute, avec des nuances bien prononcees, mais ce qui n'en est 
pas moins encore tres-marque, quand on compare des tetes d'hommes de races aussi 
differentes. 

" En mettant en presence des tetes de Chinois et d'hommes de race semitique, il y a un 
peu plus de rapport, plus de rapport surtout dans la longueur de la face. Chez les Juifs, 
les Arabes, etc., cependant, si le frontal est plus rejete en arriere que chez les Europeens, 
quand on le considere par devant, on voit qu'il reste large au sommet, au lieu de se retreeir 
comme chez les Chinois. Dans les tetes de Chinois, les os nasaux sont moins saillants, les 
os maxillaires sont plus proeiuinents, la partie posterieure de la tete est moins oblongue. 

" Enfin les Chinois, d'apres tous les caracteres anthropologiques que nous pouvons 
observer, se montrent dans le genre humain comme un type bien earacterise et comme un 
type inferieur aux races europeennes et semitiques, ainsi que cela resulte d'un angle facial 
moins ouvert, d'une ampleur moins grande de la portion antero-superieure de la tete, et 
d'une saillie plus considerables des os maxillaires. Or comme il n'est pas douteux que 
l'ampleur de la partie antero-superieure de la tete ne soit un indice de superiorite, et le 
developpement des os maxillaires un indice d'inferiorite, l'anthropologiste doit classer la 
race chinoise comme inferieure aux races de l'Europe et de l'Orient. L'etude de l'histoire, 
des mceurs, des resultats intellectuels de ces peuples conduit absolument a la memo 
classification." 15s 

The Japanese are generally considered as belonging to the same 
type as the Chinese. The collection contains but one Japanese 
skull, presented by Dr. A. M. Lynch, TJ. S.E". The appearance of 

i 55 PI. 40 of Dumoutier's Atlas. 

166 Annales des Sciences naturelles, 2" sdrie. 

m Dumoutier's Atlas, pi. 25, bis. 158 Op. cit., pp. 228-34. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN". 



279 




this cranium does not exactly Fig. 19. 

comport with the above state- 
ment. Knowing nothing of its 
history, and having no other for 
comparison, I simply annex a 
representation of it without fur- 
ther comment. 159 

These observations, in the ag- 
gregate, conflict with the opinion 
of Pmchard, — an opinion sus- 
tained by many others — that "the 
Chinese, and the Koreans, and the 

Japanese belong to the same type of the human species as the 
nations of High Asia." He explains away the evident differences 
by a certain softening and mitigation of the Mongolian traits. 
Latham also calls the Chinese a "Mongol softened down." Such 
expressions are unfortunate; they lead to misconceptions which 
often seriously retard the progress of science, particularly its dif- 
fusion among the masses. 160 

The Indo-Chinese nations, including the Mantchurian Tungus, or 
those south of the Alden, should be regarded as a distinct but closely 
allied type, a type bearing certain resemblances to the pyramidal 
form on the one hand, and the globular on the other, but positively 
separated from these two by certain slight but apparently constant 
differences. 

The Koreans, judging from the description of Siebold, exhibit the 
same type. 

"L' ensemble de leurs traits perte, en general, le caractere de la race Mongole; la largeur 
et la rudesse de la figure, la preeminence des pommettes, le de>eloppement des machoires, 



159 " Les Japonais," says D'Halloy, " ont en g^neVal les caracteres mongoliques moins 
prononce"es que les Chinois, ce que l'on attribue a un melange avec d'autres peuple, peut- 
etre des Kouriliens, qui auraient habits le pays avant eux." Op. cit., p. 124. 

160 Upon p. 235 of bis Nat. Hist, of Man, Prichard gives a profile view of a Chinese 
cranium, which, he says, "appears to differ but little from the European." Now if any 
one, at all familiar with European skull-forms, will take the trouble to inspect the figure in 
question, he will at once perceive how erroneous is the above statement. Every careful 
craniographer must object to such loose remarks. Again, upon the third and fourth plates 
of his work, he compares together the crania of a Congo negro, a Chetimache Indian of 
Louisiana, and a Chinese of Canton, and from the manifest resemblances between them, he 
ventures to assert that the characteristics of these widely-separated races cannot be relied 
upon as specific. In the Mortonian collection, so numerously represented in American and 
African skulls, and containing twelve Chinese crania, also, I cannot find a parallel instance 
of this similarity. I am forced to conclude, therefore, either that Dr. P. was mistaken as 
to the sources of these skulls, or that we should regard their similarity as one of those 
exceptional or aberrant examples, which occasionally arise to puzzle the cranioscopist in 
the present unsettled state of the science. 



280 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

la forme e'crase'e de la racine nasale et les ailes 61argies du uez, la grandeur de la bonche, 
l'fipaisseur des levres, l'apparente obliquity des yeux, la chevelure roide, abondante, d'un 
noir bruDatre ou tirant sur le roux, 1'epaisseur des sourcils, la raret*; de la barbe, et enfin 
un teint couleur de froment, rouge jaunatre, les font reconnaitre, au premier abord, pour 
des naturels du nord et de FAsie. Ce type se retrouve ehez la plupart des Cortiens que nous 
avons vus, et ils conviennent eux memes que c'est celui qui distingue le niieux leur nation." 

He proceeds to express his conviction of the co-existence of two 
distinct types in this region. 

Of the tribes of the Trans-Gangetic or Indo-Chinese Peninsula, 
the Mortonian collection contains but one representative — a Cochin- 
Chinese from Turon Bay (ISTo. 1527) — which appears to me artiUcially 
deformed. I am therefore unable, at present, to arrive at any deter- 
mination of their cranial type. Finlayson describes these tribes in 
the following manner : 

" The face is remarkably broad and flat ; the cheek-bones prominent, large, spreading, 
and gently rounded ; the glabellum is flat, and unusually large ; the eyes are, in general, 
small ; the aperture of the eyelids, moderately linear in the Indo-Chinese nations and the 
Malays, is acutely so in the Chinese, bending upwards at its outer end ; the lower jaw is 
long, and remarkably full under the zygoma, so as to give to the countenance a square 
appearance ; the nose is rather small than flat, the alse not being distended in any uncommon 
degree; in a great number of Malays, it is largest towards its point; the mouth is large, 
and the lips thick ; the beard is remarkably scanty, consisting only of a few straggling 
hairs ; the forehead, though broad in a lateral direetion,'is in general narrow, and the hairy 
scalp comes down very low. The head is peculiar; the antero-posterior diameter being 
uncommonly short, the general form is rather cylindrical ; the occipital foramen is often 
placed so far back that from the crown to the nape of the neck is nearly a straight line. 
The top of the head is often very flat. The hair is thick, coarse, and lank ; its color is 
always black." 161 

Dr. Rtjschenberger thus describes the Siamese : 

" The forehead is narrow at the superior part, the face between the cheek-bones broad, 
and the chin is again narrow, so that the whole contour is rather lozenge-shaped than oval. 
The eyes are remarkable for the upper lid being extended below the under one at the corner 
next to the nose ; but it is not elongated like that organ in the Chinese or Tartar races. 
The eyes are dark or black, and the white is dirty, or of a yellowish tint. The nostrils are 
broad, but the nose is not flattened, like that of the African. The mouth is not well formed, 
the lips projecting slightly ; and it is always disfigured, according to our notions of beauty, 
by the universal and disgusting habit of chewing areca-nut. The hair is jet black, renitent 
and coarse, almost bristly, and is worn in a tuft on the top of the head, about four inches 
in diameter, the rest being shaved or clipped very close. A few scattering hairs, which 
scarcely merit the name of beard, grow upon the chin and upper lip, and these they cus- 
tomarily pluck out. 

" The occipital portion of the head is nearly vertical, and, compared with the anterior 
and sincipital divisions, very small ; and I remarked, what I have not seen in any other 
than in some ancient Peruvian skulls from Pachacamac, that the lateral halves of the head 
are not symmetrical. In the region of firmness the skull is very prominent ; this is remark- 
ably true of the talapoins." 162 

161 Embassy to Siam and Hue, p. 230. 

162 \ Voyage Round the World ; including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam. By W. S. W 
Ruschenberger, M. D. Philada,, 1838, p 299. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 281 

Neal [Residence in the Kingdom of Siam) assures us that the Siamese 
differ in their physical characters from all the surrounding nations. 

According to Morton, among the inhabitants of Cochin-China, or 
Annam, "the general form of the face is round, so that the two 
diameters are nearly equal. The forehead is short and broad, but 
the occipital portion of the head is more elongated than in the 
people of Siam. The chin is large and broad ; the beard grisly and 
thin, the hair copious, coarse, and black; the nose small, but well-' 
formed, and the lips moderately thick." 

Blanchard alludes to the inhabitants of Malacca, and the forms 
of their crania, in the following terms : 

"La population de Malacca, du reste, comme celle des lies de la Sonde, n'est pas homo- 
gene ; il y en a vine partie qui priSsente mie civilisation analogue a celle des Malais ; il y en 
a une autre, form6e de tribus incultes, qui habite les forets de l'inte'rieur du pays. Lea 
tetes des naturels de Malacca representees dans l'atlas de M. Dumoutier ne sauraient etre 
rapproche'es indifferemment de toutes celles que nous avons decrites des habitants de la 
Malaisie. 

"Vues par devant, ce sont des faces courtes comme chez tous les peuples des races 
malaises. Mais ici il n'y a pas cette ampleur du coronal et des parigtaux que nous avons 
signaled chez le naturel d'Amboine, represent*; dans notre atlas, ni chez le Bughis de 
Ouadjou, ni chez les naturels des Philippines. 

" Chez nos individus de Malacca, Ton observe aussi un plus grand developpement des os 
maxillaires, et Ton retrouve ainsi cette forme a cotes paralleles que nous avons vu si I16- 
quemment dans les types pre'ce'demment dticrits. 

" M. Dumoutier a place les tetes de naturels de Malacca sur la meme planche que lo 
naturel d'Amnoubang de Tile de Timor; nous ne croyous pas qu'il faille venir chercher ici 
une ressemblance bien grande. Dans la tete du Timorien, le front est plus bas et plus large 
vers le haut, la partie posterieure de la tete est plus allong^e, les maxillaires sont plus 
avanc^s, etc. 

"Ces hommes de Malacca ressemblent, au confraire. d'une maniere frappante, au Bughis 
de 1'Etat de Sidenring dont il a 6t& question plus haut. 

"C'estla meme face, courte, avec le coronal £troit, pen €1e\6, rejete' en arriere, dSprime 
au-dessus des arcades sourcilieres; seulement chez le Bughis il y a une tendance un pcu 
plus marquee a la forme pyramidale. Les apophyses zygomatiques sont de meme extre- 
mement saillantes ; le maxillaire supijrieur est large et court, sans i'etre autant que chez 
le naturel de Celebes, et le maxillaire infe"rieur est aussi fort large. Enfin chez les uns et 
les autres la region posterieure n'est que peu dtendue en arriere. 

"En rfcuine\ il n'est pas douteux que le Bughis represents dans l'atlas de M. Dumoutier 
et les individus de Malacca appartiennent a la meme race. Le fait que nous constatons ici 
devient une grande preuve a l'appui de l'opinion tres-re"pandue parmi les ethnogrnphes que 
les Bughis sont les descendants d'individus originaires du continent. Ce qui jette toujoui-s 
dans un grand embarras, e'est la diversity des types observes sur la plupart des points de 
la Malaisie et dans les divers endroits du continent indien." 163 

The above descriptions evidently lead to the recognition of several 
varieties or sub-types of cranial form in the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, 
some of which are more or less related to the predominating type of 

163 Op. cit., pp. 220-2. 



282 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Central Asia, while others approximate the Malayan, and through 
these the Polynesian forms. Indo-China may therefore be regarded 
as the transitionary or debatable ground between Asia and Polynesia. 

Concerning the skull-forms of the mysterious aboriginal tribes of 
this region, who here and there "crop out" above the prevailing 
type (the perplexing representatives of an earlier and perhaps primi- 
tive humanitarian epoch), I have nothing to say, being without the 
necessary material. Among these relics of a former time may be 
enumerated the savage Garo, or hill-tribes of South-west Assam, 
with their Negro characteristics ; the savage blacks of the Andam- 
man Isles ; and certain wild tribes dwelling to the north of Ava, and 
differing from the dominant population in language, religion, and 
physical characters. These, in common with the Bheels and Govand 
tribes of Guzerat, the Puharrees of Central, the Cohatars of Southern, 
and the Jauts of Western India, all seem to be the remnants of a 
once powerful and widely-spread people. 

Very few, if anj r , people are more varied in their physical charac- 
ters than the great Indostanic Family. Conquest and amalgamation 
have disguised and altered its primitive types in a remarkable degree. 
Only here and there, in the mountainous regions, do we catch a glimpse 
of these types. A portion of the aborigines appear to have been of a 
dark or quite black complexion. 

"In general, the face is oval, the nose straight or slightly aquiline, the mouth small, the 
teeth vertical and well-formed, and the chin rounded and generally dimpled. The eyes are 
black, bright, and expressive, the eyelashes long, and the brow thin and arched. The hair 
is long, black, and glossy, and the beard very thin. The head of the Hindoo is small in 
proportion to the body, elongated and narrow especially across the forehead, which is only 
moderately elevated." 16i 

The collection contains in all forty-three crania of the Indostanic 
Race. Among these skulls, at least two types can be distinguished. 
1st. The fair-skinned Ayras, a conquering race, speaking a Sanscrit 
dialect, and occupying Ayra-Varta, which extends from the Vindya 
to the Himalaya Mountains, and from the Bay of Bengal to the 
Indian Ocean, and comprises the Mahrattas, and other once powerful 
tribes, who have so boldly and obstinately resisted the English arms. 
These tribes are of Persian origin. They migrated to India, accord- 
ing to M. Guigniaut, as early as 3101 b. c. 2d. The Bengalee, 
represented by thirty-five skulls. Dr. Morton considers these small- 
statured, feeble-minded, and timid people as an aboriginal race upon 
whom a foreign language has been imposed. 

Of the eight Ayra skulls in the collection, six are of the Brahmin 

16i Crania Americana, p. 32. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



283 




caste, and two are Thuggs. Fig. 
20 — the skull of Sumboo-Sing, 
hanged at Calcutta for murder — 
very well represents this peculiar 
type. In the Anthropologic of 
Emile Blanchard, the reader will 
find an interesting comparison 
drawn between the Hindoo, Malay, 
and Micronesian forms of the cra- 
nium. 

I have already, in substance, ex- 
pressed the opinion that the cra- 
nium of the Lapp, in point of con- Hindu (1330). 
formation, must be regarded as 

constituting the connecting link between the types predominating 
in the Boreal Zone, and those encountered among the European or 
Indo-Germanic races. I have also ventured the opinion that, through 
the Osmanlis and the Khazan Tartars, the Mongolic form, character- 
izing the Asiatic realm, glided, by an easy transition, into the Euro- 
pean. But Asia graduates into Europe still more naturally, perhaps, 
through the races constituting the widely-spread Finnic or Tchudic 
family, which, at an epoch antedating the earliest records, occupied 
the country extending from Norway to the Yennisei, north of the 
55th degree of latitude in Asia, and the 60th in Europe. I have now 
to state that, through the Affghan skull, the Indostanic blends with 
the Semitic foirn. Thus, then, it appears that, in pursuing our cra- 
nial investigations, it is immaterial what route we take in passing 
from the Asiatic into the so-called European or Caucasian area. 
Whether we journey from Hindustan through Affghanistan, seeking 
the table-lands of Iran ; or, setting out from the heart of Mongolia, 
traverse the Turkish region, and so enter Asia Minor ; or, penetrate 
from the North-East into Scandinavia, through the intervening Lapps 
and Finns, we meet with the same result — a type which is, in general, 
as unlike that of the great region just surveyed, as are the animal 
and vegetable forms of these two countries. 

The home of the so-called European, Caucasian, or White race, 
comprehends Europe, Africa north of the Saharan Desert, and South- 
western Asia. This extensive region may, for convenience of study, 
be divided into four provinces, of which the first, extending from 
Finnmark southward into the heart of Europe, is occupied by the 
Teutonic, Gothic, or Scythic family ; the second comprises Western 
and Southern Europe, and is inhabited by the Celtic family; the 
third, located in Eastern Europe, contains the great Shlavic group ; 



284 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

while the fourth, or Africo-Asiatic, extends along the southern shore 
of the Mediterranean into Asia, as far east as Affghanistan, and is 
occupied by the expansive Semitic family. A closer and more criti- 
cal examination of these four divisions compels us to recognise for 
each a number of minor areas or limited districts, which, while they 
bear to each other a general family likeness, are also characterized 
by floral and faunal peculiarities, in harmony with certain cranial 
distinctions about to be noticed. 

When to the increasing number of naturally sub-typical forms are 
added the innumerable hybrid varieties resulting from the extensive 
migrations and endless intermixtures which, from remote times, have 
been going on in this region, it becomes evident that any attempt at 
a successful generalization of these forms must necessarily be at- 
tended with much difficulty. To grasp the idea of a European type 
is one thing; to select from a number of skulls one which shall 
embody the essentials of this idea, so as to serve for a standard, is 
quite another. 

In the consideration of European types, I commence with the 
Finns. 

Attempts have been made to associate the Ugrian family, in point 
of origin, with the nomadic races of Central Asia. But historically, 
no proof can be adduced that they ever dwelt as a body upon the 
plateaux of this latter region. They are not true nomades ; and, as 
far as I can learn, differ in physical characters from their neighbors. 
The only support to the opinion is a certain affinity of language. 
Anciently the Ugrian area extended from the Baltic into Trans- 
Uralian Siberia. The western extremity penetrated Europe, and 
was inhabited by the True Finns, whose relation to the Lapps I have 
al ready briefly alluded to. The eastern extremity mainly comprised 
the Ugrians or Jugorians. Between the two dwelt the Tchudas 
proper. Latham is disposed to bring the Samoiedes, Yenniseians, 
and Yukahiri into this area, thus carrying the Ugrians nearly to 
Bhering's Strait, and almost in contact with the Eskimo. 165 Ana- 
tomical characters not to be slighted, not to be explained away, are, 
however, against the attempt. 

Through the kindness of Prof. Retzius, of Stockholm, the Mor- 
tonian collection has been lately increased by the addition of nine 
specimens of the true Finnic stock. Of these heads, I find the largest 
internal capacity is 112-5, the smallest 81 - 5, and the mean, 95-3 cubic 
inches. From an examination of these skulls, the following brief 
description is derived : The regularly developed head has a square or 

165 The Native Races of the Russian Empire. By R. G. Latham, M. D., &c, being vol. II. 
of the Ethnographical Library, conducted by E. Norris, Esq. London, 1854, pp. 12, 13. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



285 



somewhat angularly round appear- 
ance. The antero-posterior dia- 
meter being comparatively short, 
it falls within the brachy-cephalic 
class of Retzius. The forehead is 
broad, though less expansive than 
in the true Germanic race. This 
frontal breadth, the lateral expan- 
sion of the parietalia, and the flat- 
ness of the os occipitis, give to the 
coronal region, when viewed per- 
pendicularly, a square, or rather 
slightly oblong appearance. The 



Fig. 21. 




Finn (1537). 



face is longer and less broad than in the Mongolian head, while the 
lower jaw is larger, and the chin more prominent. Hence, the lower 
part of the face is advanced, somewhat in the manner of the Scla- 
vonian face. The whole head is gather massive and rude in struc- 
ture, the bony prominences being strongly characterized, and the 
sutures well defined. The general configuration of the head is 
European, bearing certain resemblances, however, to the Mongolian 
on the one hand, and the Sclavonian on the other. 

I have already alluded to the great diversity of opinion relative 
to the affiliations of the Finns, and the position to which they should 
be assigned in ethnic classification. Malte-Brun distinguishes them 
from both the Sclavonians and Germans, but associates them with 
the Lapps. 166 Pinkerton coincides in this view, but is inclined 
to consider the Lapps a peculiar variety. 167 Burdach classes the 
Finns with the Sclaves and Lapps. 168 Bort de St. Vincent con- 
siders the Lapps, Samoiedes, and Tchuktchi as Hyperboreans, and 
recognizes in the Finns a variety of the Sclavonic race. 169 Htjece 
regards the Finns as a distinct people, differing from both the Euro- 
pean and Mongolian families. 170 "The Fin organization," writes 
Latham, "has generally been recognized as Mongol — though Mon- 
gol of the modified kind." 171 The original identity of the Finns 
and Lapps has been argued from certain linguistic affinities between 
the two races. Prichard considers the evidence of their consan- 



lro System of Universal Geography. Edinburgh, 1827. Vol. VT. p. 75. 

1C ' Modern Geography. Philadelphia, 1804, Vol. I. pp. 383, 404. Walckenaee, the 
French translator and editor of this work, draws a strong line of distinction between the 
Finns and Lapps. Geographic Moderne. Paris, 1804, t. 3eme, p. 258, note. 

168 Der Mensch, cited by Hueck. 

169 L'Homme, Essai Zoologique sur le Genre Humaine. 3e edit., t. 1. 

1.0 De Craniis Estonum, p. 11. 

1.1 Native Races of the Russian Empire, p. 72. 



286 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

guinity to be sufficiently well demonstrated, 172 and cites Leemius, 
G-tjnnerus, Porthan, Ihre, Rask, and others as advocates of this 
opinion. Opposed to this identity, however, are the well-marked 
physical differences observed by tiearly all the travellers who have 
visited these people. Linn-^us, long ago, pointed out, in the con- 
cise terms of the naturalist, the most prominent of these differences. 
" Fennones corpore toroso, capillis flavis prolixis, oeulorum iridibus 
fuscis. Lappones corpore parvo, capillis nigris, brevibus, rectis; 
oeulorum iridibus nigrescentibus." Very ingenious theories have 
been advanced to reconcile this assumed consanguinity with the 
anatomical differentiae above indicated. Thus Von Buch ascribes 
this difference to the fact, that of the two people, the Finns alone 
use hot baths and warm clothing. Long separation and exposure to 
different physical influences have also been deemed sufficient to 
account for the discrepancy. 

In consideration of the animated controversy which has been 
carried on by the learned concerning the relationship of the Lapp 
and the Finlander, it may be well to introduce here the carefully 
drawn description of an Esthonian skull, originally published in 
Latin by Dr. A. Hueck, of Dorpat. 173 There are reasons for con- 
sidering the Finnic type to be preserved in its greatest purity among 
the Esthonians. These people appear to be the indigence of Esthonia; 
at least, "no earlier population seems to have preceded them." 17 * 

"In the Esthonian race," says Dr. H., "the skull, though angular, is not very robust. 
A square form is most frequently observed, and even when it passes into an oval shape, 
which is often the case, it presents a well-defined appearance of angularity. A pyramidal 
or wedge-like figure (forma cuneata) is more rarely encountered, and it has never happened 
to me to observe a round Esthonian skull. 

"At first sight, the calvaria, when compared with the facial skeleton, appears large; 
and, if viewed from above or behind, square : for not only are the parietal bosses very 
prominent, but the occiput, in the region of the superior linea semicircularis, is strongly 
arched both posteriorly and towards the sides. The sinciput is a little less broad than the 
occiput; the forehead is plane, less gibbous than usual and low. The frontal breadth is 
only apparent, because the more projecting external orbitar process, with the equally 
prominent malar bones below, is continuous with the smoother posterior part of the semi- 
circular line of the os frontis. The temporal fossa is capacious, though not very deep, and 
is terminated anteriorly by the firm posterior margin of the frontal process of the malar 
bone, and externally by a sufficiently strong zygomatic arch, under which juts out in the 
posterior side the articular tubercle or crest, by which the zygomatic arch is continued 
above the external opening of the ear. Moreover, the condyloid processes of the occipital 
bone appear to me larger and more prominent than in the other skulls. On the other hand, 

172 Researches, iii., 297. 

173 De Craniis Estonum commentatio anthropologica qua viro illustrissimo Joanni Theo- 
doro Busgh, doctoris dignitatem impetratam gratulatur Ordo. Med. Univers. Dorpatensis, 
interprete Dr. Alexander Hueck, Dorpati Livonorum, 1838, 4to., pp. 7-10. 

171 See Latham's Native Races of the Russian Empire, p. 75. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 287 

the mastoid process, in all the (Esthonian) skulls which I have examined, is small and less 
rough ; the Kussian crania, on the contrary, excel in long and thick mastoid processes. 
Not more developed is the external occipital protuberance ; nor in general are the impres- 
sions of the muscles very conspicuous on the occipital bone. 

" Upon comparing the base of the skull, I have found no differences of greater moment. 
However, the internal occipital protuberance appears to me greater than usual ; the crucial 
lines are strongly characterized, and the transverse furrows deeper. While the ossa petrosa 
project considerably into the cranial cavity, the os occipitale, where it forms the inferior 
occipital fossa, is less convex ; hence, from this conformation, the space occupied by the 
cerebellum is manifestly narrowed. Nothing else is observable, except that the depressions 
in the anterior part of the cranium present a more angular form, and, finally, the jugular 
foramina appear to me larger than in the skulls of other races of men. 

" The facial part, compared with the calvaria, is small, broad, and low. The breadth 
(of the face) is produced, not so much by the development of the malar bones, as in skulls 
of the Mongolian variety, but rather by a greater prominence of the malar process of the 
superior maxilla. On this account, the inter-malar, compared with the frontal, diameter, 
appears much greater than in Europeans in general. Hence, the external orbital margins 
are flared out more, the distance between these margins is greater chan the breadth of fore- 
head, and the orbits themselves are wider. Therefore, the malar process of the maxillary 
bone, being thus rendered more prominent, the antrum Highmorianuni becomes necessarily 
more capacious. For a similar reason, the sphenoidal sinuses, also, are deeper than in 
German heads. And even the cells of the ethmoid are greater, and the paper-like lamina, 
which is ordinarily vertical, is rather arched in the Esthonians, and projects towards the 
orbit, blending gradually with the orbital surface of the body of the superior maxilla. The 
frontal sinuses are very large, which, in the external aspect, is indicated by a prominent 
glabella and projecting superciliary arches 

"The malar process of the upper maxilla is stronger than usual; on the other hand, the 
frontal and alveolar processes of the same bone are shorter ; hence, the whole face, from 
the naso-frontal suture to the alveolar margin, is shortened in length. This broad and lon- 
gitudinally contracted form of the face especially affects the form of the orbits, and gives 
to the 6kull of the Esthonians its most characteristic type. For, in comparison with their 
breadth, the orbits are low, and transversely oblong or almost square in shape. This ap- 
pearance depends upon the above-mentioned proportions of the superior maxilla, and is 
the more noticeable, because the supra-orbital margin descends lower under a very convex 
superciliary arch, and is less curved in shape, while, opposite to it, the infra-orbital margin 
also makes a very prominent edge. 1 ' 5 .... Antero-posteriorly, the orbit is somewhat 
deeper than in other skulls, and, on account of the contracted entrance (humilem introilum) 
appears to be deeper than it really is. 

" The root of the nose, above which the glabella projects considerably, is compressed and 
flat, and the nasal bones, but little arched, terminate in a pyriform aperture. The frontal 
process of the upper maxillary bone being shorter, and the alveolar process lower, and, at 
the same time, the body of the upper maxillary bone less broad than usual, the space sur- 
rounded by the teeth is necessarily narrower. The incisor teeth of the upper jaw are 
seldom perpendicular, but incline obliquely forwards, so that their alveolar edge, not formed 
as in other crania, at the angle of the foramen incisivum, merges gradually into the hard 
palate. The peculiar evolution of the organs inservient to mastication, gives rise to differ- 
ences even in the skull. For the whole surface of the temporal fossa is more exactly de- 

ro The prominence of the malar bones, the narrowness of the orbits, and the squareness 
of their margins, was also observed about Dorpat, by Isenflamm (Anatomische Untersuch- 
ungen. Erlangen, 1822, pp. 254-6). C. Seidlitz appears to have been the first to describe 
the form of the orbits accurately ; he has attempted to show that this form gave rise to two 
affections, common in this region — trichiasis and entropium. (Disserlatio lnauguralis de 
Prcecipuis Oculorum Morbis inter Eslhonos obviis Dorpati Livonorum, 1821.) 



288 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

fined, not only by the semicircular line of the os frontis, hut also by a very prominent crest 
above the external meatus, into the posterior part of which the zygomatic processes are 
continued. Moreover, in nearly all the Esthonian skulls, the external pterygoid processes 
are very broad ; often the spinous process of the sphenoidal bone is, at the same time, so 

prolonged, that it coalesces with the posterior margin of the former process This 

conformation indicates a greater evolution of the external pterygoid muscle than in others 
less broad. This muscle being efficient, the lateral motion of the lower jaw is increased, in 
consequence of the smallness of the condyles as compared with the large glenoid cavity ; 
hence, the crowns of the teeth, already worn down in the young, are proofs of the posses- 
sion of the most powerful organs for masticating vegetable food. It only remains to be 
observed that, in the lower jaw, the ascending ramus is lower than in skulls of the Cauca- 
sian variety, the angle more obtuse, and the posterior part of the body of the jaw less broad, 
and the anterior part higher, and the chin itself rounded, and rarely angular." 

Such, according to Dr. Hueck, are the characters of the Esthonian 
skull — characters which, he further assures us, are more pronounced 
in proportion as these people are less mixed with others. He also 
expresses a belief in the possibility of tracing the Finns to their 
primitive sources, by a careful study of the heads found in ancient 
sepulchres of this region. 

From the foregoing descriptions the reader will readily perceive 
the differences between the Finnic and Mongolic types of skull. 
The Mongolian face is broad and high, the cheek-bones very robust, 
the malar fossa shallow, the nasal bones small and flat, teeth strong 
and straightly placed, bounding a large space ; the orbits are deep and 
less square. Oblique palpebral openings correspond to the formation 
of the facial bones, for the internal orbital process of the frontal bone 
descends more deeply than in the Caucasian variety, and the Estho- 
nians especially, whence the lachrymal bone and the entrance to the 
canal are lower down. The internal canthus being adjacent to this, 
is placed lower; hence the obliquity of the palpebral opening, so 
peculiar to the Mongolian. "We thus find nothing common to the 
Mongolian type and to the shape of the Esthonian skull except a 
certain squareness of figure which is not constant. 

It will thus be seen that the cranial type of the Laplander belongs 
to a lower order than that of the Finn, and that the former race falls 
properly within the limits of the Arctic form, while the latter leans 
decidedly towards the Lido-Germanic type, finding its relation to the 
latter through the Sclavonian rather than the true Scandinavian 
types. But inferiority of form is to some extent a natural indi- 
cation of priority of existence. We are thus led from cranial investi- 
gations alone to recognize the Lapps as the autochthones of North- 
western Europe, who at a very remote period have been overlaid by 
the encroaching Finn. This opinion is countenanced by the follow- 
ing facts. GrEUER assures us that the earliest historical accounts of 



OF THE RACES OF MEN". 289 

the Lapps and Finns testify to their diversity and primitive separa- 
tion. Under the combined pressure of the Swedes and Norwegians 
on the west, and the Finns on the east, the Lapponic area has, from 
the dawn of history, been a receding one. Lapponic names for places 
are found in Finland, and, as already observed, human bones more 
like those of the Laplanders than the Scandinavians have been found 
in ancient cemeteries as far south as Denmark. Peter Hogstrom 
tells us that the Lapps maintain that their ancestors formerly had 
possession of all Sweden. We have it upon historical record, that so 
late as the fifteenth century Lapponic tribes were pushed out of 
Savolax and East Bothnia towards the north. 

Prof. S. Nilsson, of Lund, thinks that the southern parts of Sweden 
were formerly connected with Denmark and Germany, while the 
northern part of Scandinavia was covered with the sea ; that Scania 
received its post-diluvian flora from Germany ; and that as vegeta- 
tion increased, graminivorous animals came from the south, followed 
by the carnivora, and finally by man, who lived in the time of the 
Bos primigenius and Ursus Spelteus. In proof of the antiquity here 
assigned to Scandinavian man, he tells us that they have in Lund a 
skeleton of the Bos pierced with an arrow, and another of the Ursus, 
which was found in a peat-bog in Scania, under a gravel or stone 
deposit, along with implements of the chase. 176 From these imple- 
ments, he infers that these aborigines were a savage race of fishers 
and hunters. 

"The skulls of the aboriginal inhabitants found in these ancient barrows are short 
(brachy-cephalie of Retzius), "with prominent parietal tubers, and broad and flattened occi- 
put. It is worthy of remark, that the same form of cranium exists among several very 

1,6 The reader will find some highly interesting and curious speculations upon the 
antiquity of British Man, in a paper entitled. On the Claims of the Gigantic Irish Deer to be 
considered as contemporary with Man, recently read (May, 1855), by Mr. H. Denny, before 
the Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding of Yorkshire. " In my endeavor 
to trace the Megaceros down to the human era," says Mr. D., in concluding his paper, "I 
am by no means advocating the idea that they have, as species, been equally long inhabi- 
tants of this earth. On the contrary, I suppose that the last stragglers only, which escaped 
annihilation by physical changes and causes, may have continued to exist down to Man's 
first appearance on the British Isles ; and as precisely similar views regarding the extinction 
of the Dinornis in New Zealand have been advocated by Dr. Mantell in one of his last com- 
munications to the Geological Society, I shall make no apology in concluding with his 
remarks when speaking of the Moa-beds: — Both these ossiferous deposits, though but of 
yesterday in geological history, are of immense antiquity in relation to the human inhabi- 
tants of the country. I believe that ages, ere the advent of the Maoris, New Zealand was 
densely peopled by the stupendous bipeds whose fossil remains are the sole indications of 
their former existence. That the last of the species was exterminated by human agency, 
like the Dodo and Solitaire of the Mauritius, and the Gigantic Elk of Ireland, there can be 
no doubt; but, ere man began the work of destruction, it is not unphilosophical to assume 
that physical revolutions, inducing great changes in the relative distribution of the land 

19 



290 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

ancient people, such as the Iberians or Basques of the Pyrenees, the Lapps and Samoiedes, 
and the Pelasgi, traces of whom are still found in Greece. 

"Next in succession to this aboriginal race, subsisting by fishing and hunting, comes 
another with a cranium. of a more lengthened oval form, and prominent and narrow occiput. 
I think this second race to have been of Gothic extraction, to have first commenced the 
division of the land for agricultural purposes, and consequently to have had bloody strife 
with the former inhabitants 

"The third race which has inhabited Scandinavia came possibly from the North and 
East, and introduced bronze into the country ; the form of the skull is very different from 
that of the two former races. It is larger than the first, and broader than the second, and 
withal prominent at the sides. I consider this race to have been of Celtic origin." The 
fourth, or true Swea race, introduced into Sweden weapons and instruments of iron, and 
appear to have been the immediate ancestors of the present Swedes. With this race 
Swedish history fairly begins. 1 ' 7 

Prof. Retzius, in the main, coincides with the opinion of Prof. 
Nilsson. He applies to the Lapps the term Turanic, and regards 
them as the relics of the true Scandinavian aborigines — a people 
who once occupied not only the southern part of Sweden, but also 
Denmark, Great Britain, Northern Germany, and France. He calls 
the Turanic skull, brachy-cephalic (short-head), and describes it as 
short and round, the occiput flattened, and the parietal protuberances 
quite prominent. 178 

A cast of a Norwegian skull in the Mortonian Collection (No. 
1260), is remarkable for its great size. It belongs to the dolicho- 
cephalic variety of Retzius. The fronto-parietal convexity is regular 
from side to side. The occipital region as a whole is quite promi- 
nent; but the basal portion of the occiput is fiat and parallel with 
the horizon when the head rests squarely upon the lower jaw. The 
glabella, superciliary ridges, and external angular processes of the 
os frontis are very rough and prominent, overhanging the orbits and 
inter-orbital space in such a manner as to give a very harsh and for- 
bidding expression to the face. The semi-circular ridges passing 
back from the external angular process, are quite elevated and sharp. 
The nasal bones are high and rather sharp at the line of junction ; 
orbits capacious ; malar bones of moderate size, and flattened antero- 
laterally ; superior maxilla rather small in comparison with the infe- 
rior, which is quite large, and much flared out at the angles. The 
facial angle is good, and the whole head strongly marked. 

According to Prof. Retzius, the Swedish cranium, as seen from 
above, presents an oval figure. Its greatest breadth is to its greatest 

and water in the South Pacific Ocean, may have so circumscribed the geographical limits 
of the Dinornis and Palapteryx, as to produce conditions that tended to diminish their 
numbers preparatory to their final annihilation." 

1,7 Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for 1847, p. 31. 

178 See Muller's Archives, for 1849 p. 575. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 291 

length as 1000 : 773. The external occipital protuberance is remark- 
ably prominent, so that the external auditory meatus appears to occupy 
a more advanced position than is really the case. A plane passing 
through the two meati, perpendicular to the long diameter of the 
cranium, cuts this diameter nearly in the middle. The face is long, 
but not very prominent, the inferior jaw well pronounced and massive, 
while the inter-orbital space is large, as is generally the case with the 
Northern races of men. From the skulls found in ancient tombs, 
we may infer that this form has not varied for at least 1000 years." 9 

The Swedish form of skull, judging from the specimens in Mor- 
ton's Collection, bears a family resemblance to the Norwegian, and 
in several respects is not unlike the Anglo-Saxon head figured in 
the first decade of Crania Britannica. In the Anglo-Saxon, how- 
ever, the chin is more acuminated, and the maxillary rami longer. 
The chief points of resemblance about the calvaria, are the slightly 
elevated forehead, the rather flattened vertex, and the inclination of 
the parietalia downwards and backwards towards the occiput. This 
latter feature is also possessed by the Norwegian cast referred to 
above. 

In the skull of a Swedish woman of the thirteenth century (No. 
1249 of the Mortonian Collection), the singularly protuberant occi- 
put projects far behind the foramen magnum. The skulls of an 
ancient Ostrogoth (No. 1255), and two ancient Cimbi'ic Swedes (Nos. 
1550 and 1532), evidently belong to the same peculiar type. These 
four heads resemble each other as strongly as they differ from the 
remaining Swedes, Finns, Germans, and Kelts in the Collection. 
They call to mind the kumbe-kephalse, or boat-shaped skulls of 
Wilson. No. 1362, a cast of an ancient Cimbrian skull, from the 
Danish Island of Moen, presents the same elongated form. It differs 
from the four preceding skulls in being larger, more massive, and 
broader in the forehead. 

Nos. 117, 1258, and 1488 possess the true Swedish form as described 
above. 

Two Swedo-Finland skulls (Nos. 1545 and 1546) — marked in my 
manuscript catalogue as appertaining to " descendants of colonists 
who settled in Finland in the most remote times" — are broader, 
more angular, and less oval than the true Swedish form. The hori- 
zontal portion of the occiput is quite flat, and the occipital protube- 
rance prominent. 

Three Sudermanland Swedes have the same general form. Three 
Swedish Finns (mixed race) have a more squarely globular, and less 

1,9 Ueber die Schadelformen der Nordbewohner in Miiller's Archiv., 1845. 



292 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

oval cranium than the true Swedes. In the skull of a Turannic 
Swede (No. 121) the posterior region of the calvaria is broader, and 
does not slope away so much. In general configuration this cranium 
approaches the brachy-cephalic class of Rbtzius. 

A Danish skull figured by Nilsson, 180 after Eschricht, of Copen- 
hagen, resembles the Lapponic much more than the Norwegian or 
Swedish forms described above. 

The cranial types of Great Britain — the "islands set in the sea" 
— next claim our attention. 

The ethnology of the British Isles appears to be very closely con- 
nected with that of Scandinavia. According to Prof. Nilsson, the 
ancient inhabitants of Britain are identical with those of Norway 
and Sweden. 181 Reference to the views put forth by different ethno- 
graphers and archeologues reveals to us a remarkable degree of 
uncertainty respecting the cranial forms and general physical charac- 
ters of the primitive Britons. 

"It seems strange," says Dr. Prichard, "that such a subject as the physical character 
of the Celtic race should have been made a theme of controversy. Yet this has happened, 
and the dispute has turned, not only on the question, what characteristic traits belonged to 
the ancient Celtas, but, what are those of their descendants, the Welsh and the Scottish 
Gael?" 182 Again, he says — "The skulls found in old burial-places in Britain, which I have 
been enabled to examine, differ materially from the Grecian model. The amplitude of the 
anterior parts of the cranium is very much less, giving a comparatively small space for the 
anterior lobes of the brain. In this particular, the ancient inhabitants of Britain appear 
to have differed very considerably from the present. The latter, either as the result of many 
ages of greater intellectual cultivation, or from some other cause, have, as I am persuaded, 
much more capacious brain-cases than their forefathers." 183 In another place, he asks — 
" Was there anything peculiar in the conformation of the head in the British and Gaulish 
races ? I do not remember that any peculiarity of features has been observed by Roman 
writers in either Gauls or Britons. There are probably in existence sufficient means for 
deciding this inquiry, in the skulls found in old British cairns, or places of sepulture. I 
have seen about half-a-dozen skulls, found in different parts of England, in situations which 
rendered it highly probable that they belonged to ancient Britons. All these partook of one 
striking characteristic, viz., a remarkable narrowness of the forehead, compared with the 
occiput, giving a very small space for the anterior lobes of the brain, and allowing room for 
a large development of the posterior lobes. There are some modern English and Welsh 
heads to be seen of a similar form, but they are not numerous. It is to be hoped that such 
specimens of the craniology of our ancestors will not be suffered to fall into decay." 184 

The hope here expressed, I may say, en passant, has at length met 
with an able response, in the Crania Britannica of Messrs. Davis 

180 Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvfinare, ett forsb'k i comparativa Ethnographien af S. Nils- 
son, Phil. Dr., &c. Christianstad, 1838. I. H'aftel, Plate D, Fig. 10. 

181 See his Letter to Dr. Davis, quoted in Crania Britannica, p. 17. 

182 Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 3d edition, vol. III. London, 1841, 
p. 189. 

las Ibid, 3d edit., vol. I., p. 305. 18 * Ibid, III., 199. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 293 

and Thurnam, who have spiritedly undertaken to "rescue and perpe- 
tuate the faithful lineaments of a sufficient number of the skulls of 
the ancient races of Britain to preserve authentic data for the 
future." 

Mr. Wilde, a distinguished antiquary, calls the primitive Irish — those who, in the remo- 
test times, built the pyramidal sepulchres with stone passages — "globular-headed." The 
skulls found in the "Cromlechs," or sepulchral mounds of a later date, he assures us are 
" chiefly characterized by their extreme length from before backwards, or what is technically 
termed their antero-posterior diameter, and the flatness of their sides; and in this, and in 
most other respects, they correspond with the second form of head discovered in the Danish 
sepulchres." They also "present the same marked characters in their facial aspect, and 
the projecting occiput and prominent frontal sinuses, as the Danish" skulls. " The nose, 
in common with all the truly Irish heads I have examined, presents the most marked pecu- 
liarities, and evidently must have been very prominent, or what is usually termed aquiline. 
With this we have evidence of the teeth slightly projecting, and the chin square, well marked, 
and also prominent ; so that, on the whole, this race must have possessed peculiarly well- 
marked features, and an intelligent physiognomy. The forehead is low, but not retreating. 
The molar teeth are remarkably ground down upon their crowns, and the attachments of 

the temporal muscles are exceedingly well marked Now, we find similar conditions 

of head still existing among the modern inhabitants of this country, particularly beyond the 
Shannon, towards the west, where the dark or Fir-Bolg race may still be traced, as distinct 
from the more globular-headed, light-eyed, fair-haired Celtic people, who lie to the north- 
east of that river." In the " Kistaeven," a still later form of the ancient funereal recep- 
tacles, " the skull is much better proportioned, higher, more globular, and, in every respect, 
approaching more to the highest forms of the Indo-European variety of the Caucasian 
race." 185 

From these interesting researches of Mr. Wilde, it appears quite 
evident that Ireland has, at different and distant periods, been peopled 
by at least two, if not three, distinct races, of which the first was 
characterized by a short, and the second by an elongated form of 
skull ; thus corresponding remarkably, in physical character and 
order of succession, to the early inhabitants of Scandinavia. 

Prof. Daniel Wilson, the learned general editor of the Canadian 
Journal, has recently demonstrated the existence in Scotland of two 
distinct primitive races, prior to the appearance of the true Celtse. 
He thus refers to the crania of these ancient people : 

" Fortunately, a few skulls from Scottish tumuli and cists are preserved in the Museums 
of the Scottish Antiquaries and of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. A comparison 
of these with the specimens of crania drawn by Dr. Thurnam from examples found in an 
ancient tumular cemetery at Lamel Hill, near York, believed to be of the Anglo-Saxon 
period, abundantly proves an essential difference of races. 186 The latter, though belonging 
to the superior or dolicho-kephalic type, are small, very poorly developed, low and narrow 
in the forehead, and pyramidal in form. A striking feature of one type of crania from the 
Scottish barrows is a square compact form 

185 Lecture on the Ethnology of the Ancient Irish. By W. R. Wilde, 1844. 
™ Natural History of Man, p. 193. 



294 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



"No. 7 [Figs. 22 and 23] was obtained from a cist discovered under a large cairn at 
Nether Urquhart, Fifeshire, in 1835. An account of the opening of several cairns and 



Fig. 22. 



Fig. 23. 




'No. 7. Nethek TTrqtjhart Cairn.' 



tumuli in the same district is given by Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, in his ' Inquiry respecting 
the Site of the Battle of Mons Grampius.' 187 Some of them contained urns and burnt bones, 
ornaments of jet and shale, and the like early relics, while in others were found implements 
or weapons of iron. It is selected here as another example of the same class of crania. . . . 
The whole of these, more or less, nearly agree with the lengthened oval form described by 
Prof. Nilsson as the second race of the Scandinavian tumuli. They have mostly a singu- 
larly narrow and elongated occiput ; and with their comparatively low and narrow fore- 
head, might not inaptly be described by the familiar term boat-shaped. It is probable that 
further investigation will establish this as the type of a primitive, if not of the primeval 
native race. Though they approach in form to a superior type, falling under the first or 
dolicho-kephalic class of Prof. Retzius's arrangement, their capacity is generally small, 
and their development, for the most part, poor; so that there is nothing in their cranial 
characteristics inconsistent with such evidence as seems to assign to them the rude arts 

and extremely limited knowledge of the British Stone Period 

"The skull, of which the measurements are given in No. 10 [Figs. 24 and 25], is the 
same here referred to, presented to the Phrenological Museum by the Rev. Mr. Liddell. It 



Fig. 24, 



Fig. 25. 





"No. 10. Old Steeple, Montrose." 

is a very striking example of the British brachy-kephalic type ; square and compact in 
form, broad and short, but well balanced, and with a good frontal development. It no 
doubt pertained to some primitive chief, or arch-priest, sage, it may be, in council, and 
brave in war. The site of his place of sepulture has obviously been chosen for the same 
reasons which led to its selection at a later period for the erection of the belfry and beacon- 



187 Archseol., Vol. IV., pp. 43, 44. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 295 

tower of the old burgh. It is the most elevated spot in the neighborhood, and here his cist 
had been laid, and the memorial mound piled over it, -which doubtless remained untouched 
so long as his memory was cherished in the traditions of his people 

" Few as these examples are, they will probably be found, on further investigation, to 
belong to a race entirely distinct from those previously described. They correspond very 
nearly to the brachy-kephalic crania of the supposed primeval race of Scandinavia, described 
by Prof. Nilsson as short, with prominent parietal tubers, and broad and flattened occiput. 
In frontal development, however, they are decidedly superior to the previous class of crania, 
and such evidence as we possess seems to point to a very different succession of races to 
that which Scandinavian ethnologists now recognize in the primitive history of the north 
of Europe 

" So far as appears from the table of measurements, the following laws would seem to 
be indicated : ■ — In the primitive or elongated dolicho-kephalic type, for which the distinc- 
tive title of kumbe-kephalic is here suggested — the parietal diameter is remarkably small, 
being frequently exceeded by the vertical diameter ; in the second or brachy-kephalic class, 
the parietal diameter is the greater of the two ; in the Celtic crania they are nearly equal ; 
and in the medieval or true dolicho-kephalic heads, the parietal diameter is again found 
decidedly in excess ; while the preponderance or deficiency of the longitudinal in its rela- 
tive proportion to the other diameters, furnishes the most characteristic features referred 
to in the classification of the kumbe-kephalic, brachy-kephalic, Celtic, and dolicho-kephalic 
types. Not the least interesting indications which these results afford, both to the ethno- 
logist and the archaeologist, are the evidences of native primitive races in Scotland prior to 
the intrusion of the Celtse ; and also the probability of these races having succeeded each 
other in a different order from the primitive colonists of Scandinavia. Of the former fact, 
viz., the existence of primitive races prior to the Celta3, I think no doubt can be now enter- 
tained. Of the order of their succession, and their exact share in the changes and progressive 
development of the native arts which the archaeologist detects, we still stand in need of fur- 
ther proof. 

" The peculiar characteristic of the primeval Scottish type appears rather to be a narrow 
prolongation of the occiput in the region of the cerebellum, suggesting the term already- 
applied to them of boat-shaped, and for which the name of kumbe-kephalce may perhaps be 
conveniently employed to distinguish them from the higher type with which they are other- 
wise apt to be confounded 

" The peculiarity in the teeth of certain classes of ancient crania above referred to is of 
very general application, and has been observed as common even among British sailors. 
The cause is obvious, resulting from the similarity of food in both cases. The old Briton 
of the Anglo-Eoman period, and the Saxon both of England and the Scottish Lothians, had 
lived to a great extent on barley-bread, oaten cakes, parched peas, or the like fare, pro- 
ducing the same results on his teeth as the hard sea-biscuit does on those of the British 
sailor. Such, however, is not generally the case, and in no instance, indeed, to the same 
extent in the skulls found in the earlier British tumuli. In the Scottish examples described 
above, the teeth are mostly very perfect, and their crowns not at all worn down 

" The inferences to be drawn from such a comparison are of considerable value in the 
indications they afford of the domestic habits and social life of a race, the last survivor of 
which has mouldered underneath his green tumulus, perchance for centuries before the 
era of our earliest authentic chronicles. As a means of comparison this characteristic 
appearance of the teeth manifestly furnishes one means of discriminating between an early 
and a still earlier, if not primeval period, and though not in itself conclusive, it may be 
found of considerable value when taken in connection with the other and still more obvious 
peculiarities of the crania of the earliest barrows. We perceive from it, at least, that a 
very decided change took place in the common food of the country, from the period when 
the native Briton of the primeval period pursued the chase with the flint lance and arrow, 
and the spear of deer's horn, to that comparatively recent period when the Saxon marauders 



296 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

began to effect settlements and build houses on the scenes where they had ravaged the vil- 
lages of the older British natives. The first class, we may infer, attempted little cultivation 

of the soil 

" Viewing Archaeology as one of the most essential means for the elucidation of primitive 
history, it has been employed here chiefly in an attempt to trace out the annals of our 
country prior to that comparatively recent medieval period at which the boldest of our his- 
torians have heretofore ventured to begin. The researches of the ethnologist carry us back 
somewhat beyond that epoch, and confirm many of those conclusions, especially in relation 
to the close affinity between the native arts and Celtic races of Scotland and Ireland, at 
which we have arrived by means of archasological evidence. . . . But we have found from 
many independent sources of evidence, that the primeval history of Britain must be sought 
for in the annals of older races than the Celtoe, and in the remains of a people of whom we 
have as yet no reason to believe that any philological traces are discoverable, though they 
probably do exist mingled with later dialects, and especially in the topographical nomen- 
clature, adopted and modified, but in all likelihood not entirely superseded by later colonists. 
With the earliest intelligible indices of that primeval colonization of the British Isles our 
archfeological records begin, mingling their dim historic annals with the last giant traces 
of elder worlds ; and, as an essentially independent element of historical research, they 
terminate at the point where the isolation of Scotland ceases by its being embraced into 
the unity of medieval Christendom." 188 

Mr. Bateman, who has carefully examined the ancient barrows 
of North Derbyshire, describes the skulls found in the oldest of 
these — known as the Chambered Barrows — as being elongated 
and boat-shaped (kumbe-kephalic form of "Wilson). The crania 
of the succeeding two varieties of barrows are of the brachy- 
cephalic type, round and short, with prominent parietalia. In the 
barrows of the "iron age" — the most recent — he found the pre- 
vailing form to approximate the oval heads of the modern inhabi- 
tants of Derbyshire. 189 

From the foregoing statements, a remarkable fact becomes evident. 
"While Retzius, ISTilsson, Eschricht, and Wilde are remarkably har- 
monious in ascribing the brachy-cephalic type to the earliest or Stone 
Period in Scandinavia, Denmark, and Ireland, we find Wilson and 
Bateman equally accordant in considering the kumbe-kephalse as the 
first men who trod the virgin soil of Caledonia and England. In the 
present state of antiquarian research, then, we are forced to conclude 
that the primitive inhabitants of Britain are identical with those of 
Sweden and Denmark, but that in different parts of these countries 
the order of their sequence has varied. 

Fig. 26 (see next page), reduced from a magnificent life-size litho- 
graph in Crania Britannica, represents a strongly-marked aboriginal 
British skull of the earliest period. " It was disinterred from the 
lowermost cist of a howl-shaped Barrow on Ballidon Moor." It 

!8S The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland ; Edinb. 1851 ; pp. 163-187, 695-6. 
189 Journal of the British Archaeological Society, vol. VII. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



297 




belongs to the brachy-cephalre of Ret- 
zius, and is regarded by Dr. Davis, 

who gives us the following description 
of it, as a typical example of the ancient 
British form. 

" This cranium possesses a rugged face, the 
hones of which are rough, angular, especially the 
lower jaw, and deeply impressed by strong mus- 
cular action. The space enclosed by the zygo- 
matic arch is rather large. It is the skull of a 
man of probably about forty-five years of age. 
The teeth, which are not remarkably large, must 

have been complete at the period of interment, Ancient Bkiton. 

except the two last molars of the upper jaw on the 

left side, which had previously perished by caries, their alveoli being wholly absorbed. 
Some of the molars still retain a thick coating of tartar; and the teeth altogether indicate 
the severe service to which they were subjected during life, for the crowns of almost all are 
worn down to a level surface, by the mastication of hard substances. The nasal bones, 
which had been fractured obliquely across the centre during the life of this primitive hun- 
ter, possibly in some encounter of the chase, and had united perfectly, with a slight bend 
to the right, are very prominent. The opening of the nostrils, moderate in size, is just an 
inch in diameter. The frontal sinuses are large, and project considerably over the nose. 
The frontal bone is not particularly remarkable either for its arched or receding form, but 
inclines to the latter. The parietal bones are regular, and do not present much lateral 
prominency. The occipital is somewhat full above the protuberance, which itself is 
strongly marked. The point of the chin is hollowed out, or depressed, in the middle, a 
not uncommon feature of the British skull, which may perhaps be taken as an indication 
of a dimple, a mark of beauty in the other sex. The profile of the calvarium presents a 
pretty uniform curvature, interrupted by a slight rising in the middle of the parietal bones, 
and the occipital protuberance. The outline of the vertical aspect is a tolerably regular 
oval. The entire cranium is of moderate density. ... Its most striking peculiarities are 
the rude character of the face, greatly heightened by the prominent frontal sinuses, and 
its moderate dimensions. It seems to have belonged to one whose struggle for life was 
severe, to conquer the denizens of the forest his chief skill, and whose food consisted of 
crude and coarse articles. Still there remain irrefragable evidences, even at this distant 
day, that his strife was a successful one, and that he became the lord of the wilderness ',' 

An ancient British skull (Fig. 27), 
from a chambered tumulus at Uley, 
Gloucestershire, figured and de- 
scribed in Crania Britannica, af- 
fords a good idea of the dolicho-ce- 
phalic or long-headed form above 
referred to. 



It "is the skull of a man of probably not less 
than sixty-five. The sutures are more or less 
grown together, and, in many places, completely 
obliterated. The cranium is of great thickness, 
especially in the upper part of the calvarium ; 
the parietal bones, in the situation of the tubers, 




Ancient British (from Uley). 



298 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

being about four-tenths of an inch in thickness, and the frontal bone, around the eminences, 
not less than half an inch. The skull is of large capacity, and is remarkable for its length in 
proportion to its breadth, belonging decidedly to the dolicho-cephalic class of Retzius. The 
form is slightly deficient in symmetry. The forehead is narrow, contracted, and rather 
receding, but not low ; a sort of central ridge is to be traced along the summit of the cra- 
nium, which is most marked in front of the coronal suture, and falls away to a decidedly 
flat surface above each temporal ridge. The very pyramidal aspect thus given to the front 
view of the skull, is well shown in our figure. The' parietal tubers are moderately promi- 
nent. The occiput is full, prominent and rounded, and presents a strongly-marked trans- 
verse ridge. The squamous and mastoid portions of the temporal bones are rather small ; 
the external auditory openings are situated farther than usual within the posterior half of 
the skull. The frontal sinuses are very marked, and the glabella moderately prominent ; 
the nasal bones, of moderate size, project rather abruptly. The insertions of the muscles 
of mastication are strongly marked, but neither the upper nor lower jaw is so large, rugged, 
or angular as is often the case in skulls from ancient British tumuli. The malar bones are 
rather small, and the zygomata, though long, are not particularly prominent. The ascending 
branch of the lower jaw forms a somewhat obtuse angle with the body of that bone ; the 
chin is poorly developed ; the alveolar processes are short and small. In both jaws, most 
of the incisor and canine teeth are wanting, but have evidently fallen out since death. The 
molars and several of the bicuspids remain in their sockets. All the teeth are remarkably 
worn down, and the molars, especially those of the lower jaw, have almost entirely lost their 
crowns ; indeed, as respects the lower first molars, nothing but the fangs remain, round 
which abscesses had formed, leading to absorption and the formation of cavities in the 
alveolar process. The worn surfaces of the teeth are not flat and horizontal, but slope away 
obliquely, from without inwards, there being some tendency to concavity in the surfaces of 
the lower, and to convexity in those of the upper teeth. The former are more worn on the 
outer, the latter on the inner edge. Altogether, the condition is such as we must attribute 
to a rude people, subsisting in great measure on the products of the chase and other animal 
food — ill-provided with implements for its division, and bestowing little care on its prepara- 
tion — rather than to an agricultural tribe, living chiefly on corn and fruits. Such, we have 
reason to believe, was the condition of the early British tribes. 190 The state of these, at 
least, contrasts decidedly with that observed in Anglo-Saxon crania, in which, though the 
crowns of the teeth are often much reduced by attrition, the worn surfaces are, for the most 
part, remarkably horizontal." 

In the same work, the reader will find a well-executed lithograph of 
an Anglo-Saxon skull, which Dr. Thuknam is inclined to consider as 
belonging to the " lower rather than the upper rank of "West Saxon 
settlers." 

" The general form of the skull, viewed vertically," says Dr. T., " is an irregular length- 
ened oval, so that it belongs to the dolicho-cephalic class, but is not a well-marked example 
of that form. The general outline is smooth and gently undulating ; the forehead is poorly- 
developed, being narrow, and but moderately elevated. The parietal eminences are tolerably 
full and prominent. The temporal bones, and especially the mastoid processes, are small. 
The occipital bone is full and rounded, and has a considerable projection posteriorly. The 
frontal sinuses are slightly marked ; the nasal bones small, narrow, and but little recurved. 
The bones of the face are small, the malar bones slightly prominent. The alveolar processes 

190 Caesar's words are, " Interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et came vivunt, 
pellibusque sunt vestiti." Lib. V., c. 14. Two or three centuries later, according to Dion 
Cassius, the condition of the northern Britons was similar; the Caledonians and Meatae had 
still no ploughed lands, but lived by pasturage and the chase. Xiphilon, lib. xxv., c. 12. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 299 

of the superior maxillary bones (premaxiltaries) are prominent, and deviate so considerably 
from the upright form, as to place the skull rather in the prognathic than the orthognathic 
class. The ramus of the lower jaw forms an obtuse angle with the body of this bone. The 
chin is moderately full ." 

The so-called Anglo-Saxon race — a term which, for several reasons, 
ought to be discarded from ethnological nomenclature — is represented 
in the Mortonian collection by four skulls. No. 80 — the skull of an 
English convict, named Gwillym, — belongs to the dolicho-cephalic 
form, but is not strictly oval, being flattened posteriorly. In general 
configuration, it resembles the Northern or Gothic style of head. 
The face bears the Finnic stamp. No. 539 — the skull of James 
Moran, an Englishman, executed at Philadelphia for piracy and 
murder — is long, fiat on the top, and broad between the parietal 
bones. The posterior portion of the occiput is prominent, the basal 
surface is flat. The face resembles that of Nos. 1063 and 1064 — 
Germans of Tubingen — while the calvaria approaches, in its general 
outline, the kumbe-kephalic form above alluded to. No. 991 — an 
English soldier — belongs decidedly to the Cimbric type, briefly re- 
ferred to on p. 291. No. 59 — the skull of Pierce, a convict and can- 
nibal — is long and strictly oval. It resembles the Cimbric type. 

The Anglo-American Pace — another very objectionable term, 
which, as applied to our heterogeneous population, means everything 
and nothing — has but eight representatives in Morton's collection. 
Nos. 7 and 98 possess the angularly-round Germanic form. No. 24 
— a woman, setat. 26 years — is intermediate in form between the 
German and Swedish types. No. 552 — a man, setat. 30 years — 
resembles the Norwegian described on page 290. No. 889 — a man, 
setat. 40 years — resembles 552 in the shape of the calvaria, but has a 
smaller face and less massive lower jaw. No. 1108 — a male skull — 
bears the Northern or Gothic form ; the face resembles that of the 
Tubingen Germans. 191 

The Anglo-Saxon race, according to Morton, differs from the 
Teutonic in having a less spheroidal and more decidedly oval cranium. 

"I have not hitherto exerted myself to obtain crania of the Anglo-Saxon race, except in 
the instance of individuals who have been signalized by their crimes ; and this number is 
too small to be of much importance in a generalization like the present. Yet, since these 
skulls have been procured without any reference to their size, it is remarkable that five give 
an average of 96 cubic inches for the bulk of the brain; the smallest head measuring 91, 
and the largest 105 cubic inches. It is necessary, however, to observe, that these are all 
male crania; but, on the other hand, they pertained to the lowest class of society; and 
three of them died on the gallows for the crime of murder." 

191 In arranging the Mortonian collection, I have excluded from the Anglo-Saxons the 
skull of a lunatic Englishman (No. 62) ; and from the Anglo-Americans, several skulls of 
lunatics, idiots, children, hydrocephalic cases, &c. This rule has been adopted throughout 
the whole collection. 



300 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



" The Anglo-Americans — the lineal descendants of the Anglo-Saxons — conform in all their 
characteristics to the parent stock. They possess, in common with their English ancestors, 
and in consequence of their amalgamation, a more elongated head 192 than the unmixed 
Germans. The few crania in my possession have, without exception, been derived from the 
lowest and least cultivated portion of the community — malefactors, paupers, and lunatics. 
The largest brain has been 97 cubic inches ; the smallest 82 ; and the mean of 90 (nearly) 
accords with that of the collective Teutonic race. The sexes of these seven skulls are four 
male and three female." — (Morton). 



Fig. 28. 



Craniographers have not yet agreed upon the essential characters 
of the typical Keltic skull. According to Prichard, " Some remains 
found in Britain give reason to suspect that the Celtic inhabitants 
of this county (Britain) had in early times something of the Mongo- 
lian or Turanian form of the head." 193 Dr. Morton informs us that 
the Kelts of Brittany, Scotland, and Ireland — the descendants of the 
primitive Gael — "have the head rather elongated, and the forehead 
narrow and but slightly arched : the brow is low, straight, and bushy; 
the eyes and hair are light, the nose and mouth large, and the cheek- 
bones high. The general contour of the face 
is angular, and the expression harsh." 194 In 
a letter to Mr. Gliddon, he alludes to the 
Tokkari, a people frequently represented on 
the Egyptian monuments (Fig. 28), in the 
following terms: They "have strong Celtic 
features; as seen in the sharp face, the large 
and irregularly-formed nose, wide mouth, 
and a certain harshness of expression, which 
is characteristic of the same people in all 
their varied localities. Those who are fami- 
liar with the southern Highlanders (of Scot- 
land), may recognise a speaking resem- 
blance." 195 Prof. Ketzitjs places the Keltic cranium in his dolicho- 
cephalic class, and describes it as long, narrow, laterally compressed, 
and low in the forehead. Dr. Gustaf Kombst speaks of the Keltic 
skull as " elongated from front to back, moderate in breadth and 
length." 1% In a letter-to. Dr. Thurnam, one of the authors of Crania 
Britanniea, Prof. ISTilsson declares that nothing is more uncertain and 
vague than the so-called form of the Keltic cranium, for hardly two 
authors have the same opinion of it. 197 

i92 <i This peculiarity must continue to develop itself still more obviously in the United States, 
in consequence of the immense influx of a pure Celtic population from the south and west 
of Ireland ; for this population, by intermarriage with families of English and German 
descent, while it rapidly loses its own national physiognomy, will leave its traces in a part, 
at least, of the Anglo-Saxon race by whom it is everywhere surrounded." 

193 Researches, &c, vol. III., p. XX. 194 Crania Americana, p. 16. 

IK Letter dated Philada., Nov. 23, 1842. ™ Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas. 

191 Crania Britanniea, p. 1 7. 




Tokkari. 




OF THE RACES OF MEN. 301 

Serres' G-alerie Anthropohgique, Fi g- 29 - 

at Paris, contains a skull (Fig. 29) 
marked " Type Celte, — decouvert 
dans l'aneien pare de Madame de 
Pompadour a Bellevue, pres Paris." 

The discrepancy of opinion indi- 
cated in the preceding paragraph, 
results from the fact already stated, 
that Ireland has at different periods 
been the home of different and dis- 
tinct races of men, whose history is 

recorded only on their moulderinsr 

Type Celte. 
osseous remains, and the rude im- 
plements with which these remains are generally found associated. 
These different races have transmitted, in varying degrees of purity, 
their respective and peculiar types of skull to the Irish population 
of the present day. To each and all of these types, the term " Keltic" 
has been applied ; hence, the term has at length become synonymous 
with "Irish," and, therefore, lost all definite and certain meaning, 
just as the very comprehensive word "American," as applied to 
the heterogeneous population of the United States, means Dutch, 
English, Irish, French, Red Indians, &c, &c. 

The Keltic race is represented in the Mortonian Collection by 
eight Irish heads, four skulls from the Parisian catacombs, and one 
from the field of Waterloo. No. 18 — a female Irish skull from the 
Abbey of Buttevant, County of Cork — has a form intermediate 
between the Cimbric and Swedish types, already described on page 
291. In No. 21 — a soldier killed at the battle of Chippeway — the 
Gothic or Teutonic calvarial form is associated with a heavy, massive . 
face. No. 42 — the skull of an Irishman, setat. 21, imprisoned for lar- 
ceny, and in all respects a vicious and refractory character — approaches 
the square Germanic form. No. 52 — from the Abbey of Buttevant — 
has the same form. No. 985 — skull of an Irishman, setat. 60 years — 
being rather broad between the parietal tubers, also approximates 
the Gothic type. The face resembles that of some of the Finns, but 
is smaller and less massive. No. 1186 — an Irish cranium from Mayo 
County — belongs to the peculiar boat-shaped Cimbric type. No. 
1356 — a cast of the skull of one of the ancient Celtic race of Ire- 
land 198 — appears to me to be the most typical in the Irish group 
thus briefly enumerated. This head, the largest in the group, is 

198 This cast tears the following memorandum: "Descendant of an ancient Irish King, 
Alexander O'Connor. — Original in Dublin." 



302 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

very long, clumsy and massive in its general appearance. The fore- 
head is low, broad, and ponderous; the occiput heavy and very 
protuberant ; the basis cranii long, broad, and flat ; the orbits 
capacious ; and the distance from the root of the nose to the 
Upper alveolus quite short. In its general form, it very much 
resembles the Cimbric skull, Kb. 1362. The Cimbric type, how- 
ever, is somewhat narrower in the frontal region, and widens 
more posteriorly towards the parietal protuberances. In his 
work, cited above, Prof. Nilsson figures a massive, oblong head 
to which the Irish skull under consideration bears a considerable 
resemblance. A very heavy skull from the field of Waterloo (So. 
1564) is strictly and beautifully oval. Of the four heads from the 
catacombs at Paris, three are decidedly brachy-cephalic, and one 
of the Germanic form. 

Leaving "Western Europe — the home of the Celtee — and turning 
our steps towards the region of the old Plercynian Forest, and the 
sources of the Saale River, we meet with a type of skull which has 
figured pre-eminently in the momentous and stirring historical events 
of which Europe has been the arena. The Germanic, Gothic, or 
Teutonic skull which Tacitus regarded as indigenous to the heart 
of Europe, is briefly described by Morton, as " large and spheroidal, 
the forehead broad and arched, the face round. . . ." 199 Prichard, 
after stating that we derive no information from the classical writers 
concerning the form of the head in the ancient Germans, says: "The 
modern Germans are well known to have large heads, with the ante- 
rior part of the cranium elevated and fully developed. They have 
this peculiarity of form in a greater degree than either the French 
or English." 200 Vesalius observes, "that the Germans had gene- 
. rally a flattened occiput and broad head." 201 According to Kombst, 
the Teutonic skull is larger and rounder than the Keltic. The head 
and face form a semi-circle, to which the small end of the oval is 
added, formed by the inter-maxillary region. The brow is broad, 
high, and massive. 202 Wear the close of the Decades, Bltjmenbach 
figures a cranium found in an ancient tumulus near Romsted, in 
the district of Weimar, and which the poet-philosopher Goethe sup- 
posed to be that of an ancient German. He unfortunately gives 
no description of it, but merely alludes to its symmetry and "fron- 
tem globosam et limbi alveolaris angustiorem arcum." Vimont, in 
his chapter on Tetes nationales, speaks of the " capacite considerable," 

199 Crania Americana, p. 13. 

200 Researches into the Nat. Hist, of Man, iii. 393. *>i D e Corp. Fab. Human. 
202 A. Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena, 2d edit., p. 106. 




OF THE RACES OF MEN. 303 

the thickness of the bones, and the great development of the upper 

and anterior parts of the German skull. 203 The reader will obtain a 

general idea of the Germanic cal- 

& . Fig. 30. 

varial type from the accompanying 

engraving (Fig. 30), representing 
the skull of the illustrious German 
poet, Frederick Schiller. It is 
reduced from Plate I. of Dr. Carus' 
"Atlas der Cranioscopie." 201 The 
authenticity of the drawing, the 
evident beauty of form and har- 
mony of proportion, the brilliant 
literary souvenirs inseparably at- 
tached to the memory of the au- 

SCHILLER. 

thor of the Robbers, and mend of 

Goethe, and especially the somewhat Sclavonic cast of the facial 
region, have induced me to adopt this skull, in preference to any 
of the heads contained in Morton's Collection, as the standard or 
typical representative, not so much of Teutonic as of Central and 
Eastern Europe, in general. Dr. Carus thus comments upon this 
Profit du Crane de Frederic de Schiller d'apres un pldtre rnoule : 

" Dans V ensemble, la proportionnalitS est, on ne peut plus heureuse et en parfaite har- 
monie avec les qualitfa d'un esprit Eminent, lesquelles durent sous tous les rapports, placer 
Schiller a, cote de Goethe. Chacune de trois vertebres du crane se trouve dans l'6tat du 
developpenient le plus beau et !e plus complet ; la vertfebrc m^diane est particuliferement 
grande, gracieusemente vout^e, finement modeled. Le front est essentiellement plus d&- 
veloppe' enlargeurque celui de Goethe,chez qui cependantil 6tait plus saillantau milieu. . . . 
L' occiput est egalement expressif, sans bosse ni protuberance; c'est surtout par une cer- 
taine formation i51e"gamment arrondie de toute la tete que l'ceil de l'observateur se sent 
agr^ablement captiveV' 

Of all the European crania in Morton's Collection, that of a Dutch- 
man approximates most closely what I conceive to be the true Ger- 
manic or Teutonic form. This skull is remarkable for possessing 
the large internal capacity of 114 cubic inches — the largest in the 
entire collection. The calvaria is very large ; the face rather small, 
delicate, well-formed, and tapering towards the chin. The frontal 
diameter or breadth between the temples, is 4J inches ; the greatest 
breadth between the parietal protuberances is 6-| inches ; the antero- 
posterior or longitudinal diameter is 7f inches ; the height, mea- 

203 Traits de Phrenologie, Humaine et Compared. Par J. "Vimont. Paris, 1835, ii. 478. 

204 Atlas der Cranioscopie, oder Abbildungen der Schajdel- und Antlitzformen Beruehmter 
oder sonst merkwuerdiger Personen, von Dr. C. G. Carus. Heft. I. Leipzig, 1843. The 
plates are accompanied with German and French text. 



304 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

sured from the anterior edge of the foramen magnum, in a direct 
line to the sagittal suture, is 5jg inches. A certain angularity or 
squareness of the frontal and posterior bi-parietal regions, gives to 
this head the Teutonic form. The posterior or occipital region is 
flat and broad, and presents to the eye a somewhat pentagonal out- 
line. The temporal regions are full, the mastoid processes large, 
and the basis cranii nearly round. The outline of the coronal 
region resembles a triangle, truncated at the apex. This latter 
feature is also seen in one of the Finnic skulls (No. 1538). 

Sixteen skulls represent the Suevic or Germanic race in Morton's 
Collection. The form of No. 37 — the skull of a German woman — 
is round. No. 1063 — a German of Tubingen — exhibits the square 
form very decidedly. The occiput is flattened ; the face large and 
long. No. 1064 — also of Tubingen — has the Swedish or Northern, 
angular oval, a type distinct from the oval of Southern Europe, with 
which hasty observers are apt to confound it. It is a well-formed 
head, and in some respects resembles the Anglo-Saxon skull figured 
in Crania Britanniea. No. 1188 — also of Tubingen — resembles the 
preceding skull. No. 1189 (Tubingen) bears the Swedo-Finnic type. 
Nos. 1191— German of Frankfort — 1192 and 1193 — Prussians of 
Berlin — approximate the square form. Nos. 1187 (Frankfort), and 
1065 (Prussian), present the Swedish type. No. 1066 (Prussian), is 
square, or angularly round. 

It will thus be seen, from the foregoing observations on the crania 
of the races of Northern, Central, and Western Europe, that we must 
distinguish for these regions several distinct cranial types — a Lap- 
ponic, a Finnic, a Norwegian, a Swedish, a Cimbric, a Germanic, 
an Anglo-Saxon, a Keltic, &c. ; that the modern Finn represents, in 
all probability, the ancient Tchudic or Scythic tribes ; that the Nor- 
wegian and Swedish are varieties of the same type ; that the Ger- 
manic form is intermediate between the Finn and Swede ; that the 
Anglo-Saxon skull is allied to the Swedish, its facial portion bearing, 
to some extent, the Finnic stamp ; that the Cimbric type is very 
ancient (more ancient, perhaps, than any of the forms just enume- 
rated, except the Lapponic), resembles the kumbe-kephalic, and 
represents a primitive humanitarian epoch ; that the Keltic type, 
if indeed any such exists, should be regarded as a variety of the 
Cimbric — ■ a low and early form ; and lastly, that the various types 
of skull to a certain extent approach, represent, and blend with each 
other in obedience to the great and, as yet, not properly understood 
law of gradation which seems to pervade and harmonize all natural 
forms, and in consequence, also, of the amalgamations which, within 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



305 



certain limits, must have accompanied the successive occupancy of 
this region by the races of men under consideration. 

In the following Table, the reader will find these races compared 
together in relation to their cranial capacities. 



TABLE III. 
European Crania. 





Finns. 


Swedes. 


Germans. 


Anglo- 
Saxons. 


Anglo-Ameri- 
cans. 


Kelts. 


ClMDRI. 


No. in 




No. in 




No. in 




No. in 




No. in 




No. in 




No. in 






Cata- 


i.e. 


Cata- 


I. a 


Cata- 


i.e. 


Cata- 


i.e. 


Cata- 


i.e. 


Cata- 


i.e. 


Cata- 


I. C. 


1 


logue. 




logue. 




logue. 




logue. 




logue. 




logue. 




logue. 




1534 


04.5 


1486 


00 


706 


94. 


80 


91 


552 


97 


21 


93 


1255 


80 


1535 


07.5 


1545 


107.5 


1063 


86. 


539 


92 


890 


01 


42 


97 


1532 


SO 


a 


1536 


112.5 


1546 


03.75 


1188 


85. 


991 


105 


1108 


05 


52 


82 


1550 


94 


< 


1537 


84.25 


1547 


102. 


11S0 


78. 


59 


99 






985 


93 








1538 


105. 


1548 


94. 


1191 


95. 










1186 


77 








1530 


81.5 


1540 


108.25 


1187 


104. 










1664 


87.5 








1540 


88.5 






434 


114. 




















1541 


00. 






1065 


92. 





























1066 


80. 


















Mean.. 


05.34 




100.75 




92. 




96.75 




94.33 




8S..25 




84.66 






1247 


85. 


1064 


91. 






7 


83. 


IS 


78. 


1249 


S3 


3 






1487 


65. 


1062 


93. 






24 


82. 










M 










1192 


S2. 


















3 

a 
1 s» 
1 










1193 


so. 




















04.31 




00.3 








89.6 




86.78 




84.25 



In the above Table, the reader will observe the high cranial 
capacities of the Swedes, Finns, and Germans ; he will also per- 
ceive that the Anglo-Saxons. and Anglo-Americans possess the same 
large average ; while the mean for the Kelts and Cimbri is several 
inches less. It is a curious fact, that in the column marked "Kelts," 
J*Tos. 21, 42, 52, and 985 exhibit the Gothic type, as before men- 
tioned (page 301), and have in general the high internal capacity 
of the Northern races ; while Nbs. 18, 1186, and 1564, which are 
of the Cimbric type, possess a lower internal capacity. The Table 
is not extensive enough to base upon this interesting fact any posi- 
tive conclusion ; but as far as this fact goes, it appears to me to 
confirm the suggestion already advanced, that the Cimbric and 
Keltic types of skull are closely allied, if not, indeed, identical. 

As the observant traveller, coming from the west, approaches the 
banks of the Vistula, he becomes aware of some modifications of the 
cranial type just described, — modifications which call to his mind 
20 



306 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

dim recollections of the Turk, the Tartar, and the Finn. In this 
region — the debatable ground upon which, from very remote periods, 
the Sclavonian and the German have overlapped and blended, — he 
encounters here and there certain transitionary forms, which prepare 
him for a change of type. Once beyond the Vistula and the Carpa- 
thians, in the country of the "Wend, the Slovaek, and the Magyar, he 
is called upon to study a form of head, whose geographical area — 
Sarmatia of the classical writers — extends from the region just indi- 
cated into central Asia, having the Great TJwalli for its northern, and 
the Euxine Sea and tribes of the Caucasus for its southern boundary. 
The dawn of history reveals this extensive tract occupied, as at the 
present day, by the Sclavonians, a great family, whom an able writer 
in the North British Review, for August, 1849, considers to be as 
much an aboriginal race of Eastern, as the Germans are of Central 
Europe. 

According to Prichard, this great people, who appear to be an 
aboriginal European branch of the ancient Scythse, " have the com- 
mon type of the Indo-Atlantic nations in general, and of the Indo- 
European family to which it belongs." m M. Edwards thus minutely 
describes the Sclavonic type : 

"The oontour of the head, viewed in front, approaches nearly to a square; the height 
surpasses a little the breadth ; the summit is sensibly flattened ; and the direction of the 
jaw is horizontal. The length of the nose is less than the distance from its base to the 
chin ; it is almost straight from the depression at its root, that is to say, without decided 
curvation ; but, if appreciable, it is slightly concave, so that the end has a tendency to turn 
up ; the inferior part is rather large, and the extremity rounded. The eyes, rather deep 
set, are perfectly on the same line ; and when they have any particular character, they are 
smaller than the proportion of the head would seem to indicate. The eyebrows are thin, 
and very near the eyes, particularly at the internal angle ; and from this point are often 
directed obliquely outwards. The mouth, which is not salient, has thin lips, and is much 
nearer to the nose than to the top of the chin. Another singular characteristic may be 
added, and which is very general; viz., their small beard, except on the upper lip. Such 
is the common type among the Poles, Silesians, Moravians, Bohemians, Sclavonic Hunga- 
rians, and it is very common among the Russians." 206 

According to Prof. Retzius, the Sclavonic cranium is of an oval 
form, truncated posteriorly. Its greatest length is to its greatest 
breadth as 1000 : 888. The external auditory meati are posterior to 
the plane passing through the middle of the longitudinal diameter. 
The face is exactly like that of the Swedes. 

The Sclavonic Race is but poorly represented in the cranial collec- 
tion of the Academy. Besides the cast of a Sclavonian head from 
Morlack, in Dalmatia, it contains only the head of a woman from 
Olmutz in Moravia. "I record this deficiency in my collection," 
wrote Dr. Morton, a short time before his death, " in the hope that 

205 Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, iii., 442. 

206 Des Caracteres Physiologiques des Races Humaines. Par W. F. Edwards, 1829. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



507 




SCLAVONIAN (1251). 



some person, interested in pursuits of this nature, may be induced to 
provide me with materials for making the requisite comparisons. 
My impression is, that the Sclavonian brain will prove much less 
voluminous than that of the Teutonic race." 

The Olmutzian head above alluded to (Fig. 31) very well repre- 
sents the skull-type of Eastern 
Europe. It presents the fol- 
lowing characters : — General 
form of the head globular, 
though wanting in symmetry, 
in consequence of the posterior 
portion of the right parietal 
bone being more fully devel- 
oped than the corresponding 
portion of the left; the calva- 
ria quite large in proportion to 
the face, and broadest poste- 
riorly between the parietal pro- 
tuberances; the forehead is 
high, and moderately broad ; the vertex presents a somewhat flat- 
tened appearance, in consequence of sloping downwards and back- 
wards towards the occiput ; the occipital region is also flat, and the 
breadth between the mastoid processes very great. The face is small 
and delicate, the nasal bones prominent, the orbits of moderate size, 
the malar bones flat and delicately rounded, and the zygomatic pro- 
cesses small and slender. The lower jaw is rather small, rounded at 
the angles, and quite acuminated at the symphysis. If classified 
according to its form, this head would find its place near to, if not 
between, the Kalmuck and Turkish types. 

Interlopers in the lands of the Slovack for 1000 years, and speaking 
a dialect of the Finnish language, the Magyars, or Hungarians, pre- 
sent us with ethnic peculiarities which, for several reasons, are worthy 
our close attention. Like the Yakuts of the Lena, they are a dislo- 
cated people. The displacements of the two races, however, have 
been in opposite directions. The physical characters, language, and 
traditions of the Yakuts indicate a more southern origin ; the cranial 
type and language of the Magyar point to the North. Edwards thus 
briefly describes what may be called the Hungarian type, in contra- 
distinction to the Slovack : 

" Head nearly round, forehead little developed, low, and bending ; the eyes placed obliquely, 
so that the external angle is elevated ; the nose short and flat ; mouth prominent and lips 
thick : neck very strong ; so that the back of the head appears flat, forming almost a straight, 
line with the nape ; beard weak and scattering ; stature small." 20 ' 

*>' Op. cit. 



308 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

It is to be regretted that the Mortonian Collection contains not a 
single Hungarian skull. "Well-drawn descriptions of the crania of 
this nation would, in all probability, settle at once and forever the 
long-disputed question of their origin. I may say, in passing, how- 
ever, that the above description of Edwards rather tends to the sup- 
position that the Hungarians are cognate with the Finns. 

Upon the southern border of the lands of the Magyar we encounter 
the Wallachs, the probable descendants of the ancient Getre or Da- 
cians, and the only living representatives of the ancient Thracian 
race, whose area extended from the shores of the Mediterranean, 
northward beyond the Danube, and eastward into Asia Minor. 
Here the human type again varies, to such an extent, indeed, that 
Prichaed speaks of the "Wallachs as a people peculiar and distinct 
from all the other inhabitants of the countries on the Lower Danube. 

"The common Wallach," he continues, "as we are informed by a late traveller, differs 
in a decided manner from the Magyar or Hungarian, as well as from the Slaves and 
Germans who inhabit the borders of Hungary. They are generally below the middle 
height, thin, and slightly built. Their features are often finely shaped, their noses 
arched, their eyes dark, their hair long, black, and wavy; their countenances are often 
expressive of cunning and timidity. They seldom display the dull heavy look of the 
Slovak, and still more rarely the proud carriage of the Magyar. 

" Mr. Paget was struck by the resemblance which the present Wallachs bear to the 
sculptured figures of ancient Dacians to be seen on Trajan's Pillar, which are remarkable 
for long and flowing beards." 208 

In the Bulgarians of the southern banks of the Danube, and the 
Albanians of the Venetian Gulf, we discover still other types, differ- 
ing alike from each other, and from the "Wallachian. Like the 
Basques of the Pyrenees, the Bretons of France, and the Gaels of 
Britain, the Albanians or Skippetars differ in language and physical 
characters from the races by which they are surrounded, and appear 
to be the remnant of a people who, if not identical with the myste- 
rious and much-debated Pelasgi, were, in all probability, their eotem- 
poraries. They differ decidedly from their Greek neighbors, being 
generally nearly six feet high, and strong and muscular in propor- 
tion. " They have oval faces, large mustachios, a ruddy color in 
their cheeks, a brisk, animated eye, a well-proportioned mouth, and 
line teeth. Their neck is long and thin, their chest broad; their 
legs are slender, with very little calf." 209 

Neither time nor space permits me, nor does the Mortonian Col- 
lection contain the cranial material necessary, to illustrate the 



208 Researches, &c, iii. p. 504. See, also, Paget's Travels in Hungary and Transylvania, 
vol. ii. p. 189, et seq. London, 1839. See ante, Pulszky's Chap., fig. 70, "Daoian." 

209 Poqueville cited by Prichard. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 309 

numerous and diversified types of skull which are now, as in the 
most ancient times, found scattered through the Grecian, Italian, 
and Iberian peninsulas of Europe — in fact, all along the shores 
of the Mediterranean. Tribe after tribe, race after race, nation after 
nation, appear successively to have occupied the soil of Europe, 
playing out their allotted part in the great Life-drama, and then 
sinking quietly into the oblivion of the dim, mysterious, and eternal 
Past, whose only records are vague traditions, and strange linguistic 
forms — whose sole monuments are rude mounds, and mouldering 
humatile bones. Here and there, we are called upon to contem- 
plate fragmentary and isolated communities, whose origin is lost 
in the night of time, and who for long ages have clung to a moun- 
tain range, to a valley, or a water-course, differing from the more 
modern but still ancient people about them, and slowly awaiting 
that annihilation which they instinctively feel is sure to come at last. 
As the Universe maintains its life and pristine vigor by an unending 
destruction, which is simply an incessant transmutation of its parts ; 
and as the health of individual man is preserved by the ceaseless 
molecular death and metamoi'phosis of the tissues, so the Human 
Family — the huge body humanitarian — is kept alive and strong 
upon the globe by the decay and death, from time to time, of its 
ethnic members. If these passive, stagnating parts were allowed to 
accumulate, the death of the whole would be inevitable. Thus 
hoary Nature, establishing in death the hidden springs of other 
forms and modes of life, maintains herself ever young and vigorous, 
and through apparent evil incessantly engenders good. 

It would be unpardonable, in this attempted survey of the cranial 
characteristics of the races of men, though ever so hurriedly made, 
if we omitted to notice the Greeks and Romans — respectively, the 
intellectual and physical masters of the world. In the Greek skull, 
we behold the emblem of exalted reason ; in the Roman, that of 
unparalleled military prowess. Not alone in the matchless forms 
which the inspired chisel of a Phidias and a Praxiteles has left us, 
may we study the Grecian type. Among the Speziotes of the Archi- 
pelago, and in various localities through the Morea — the area of the 
ancient Hellenes — these marble figures still find their living repre- 
sentatives ; thus attesting, at once the truthfulness of the artist, and 
the pertinacity with which nature ever clings to her typical forms. 
Nor need we resort to the Ducal Gallery at Florence, to obtain a 
correct idea of the Roman type, as embodied in the busts of the 
early Emperors of the Seven-hilled City. Travellers inform us, that 
this type, unchanged by the vicissitudes of time and circumstance, 



310 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



still lives and moves in the "Trasteverini," or mob population of the 
Tiber. 

Dr. Morton thus describes the Greek physiognomy: 

" The forehead is high, expanded, and but little arched, so that it forms, with the 
straight and pointed nose, a nearly rectilinear outline. This conformation sometimes 
_, imparts an appearance of disproportion to the 

upper part of the face, which, however, is in a 
great measure counteracted by the largeness of the 
eye. The Greek face is a fine oval, and small in 
comparison to the voluminous head. The statues 
of the Olympian Jupiter, and the Apollo Belvidere 
(Fig. 32), convey an exact idea of the perfect 
Grecian countenance." 210 

"In the Greek," says Martin, "the counte- 
nance has a more animated expression ; the eyes 
are large ; and the forehead advancing, produces 
a marked but elegant super-orbital margin, on 
which the eyebrows are delicately pencilled ; the 
nose, falling straight from the forehead, sometimes 
inclines to an aquiline form, and is often of rather 
more than moderate length ; the upper lip is short, 
and the mouth delicately moulded ; the lower jaw 
is not so large as to disturb the oval contour of the 
face, and the chin is prominent ; the general ex- 
pression, with less of sternness than in the Roman, 
has equal daring, and betokens intellectual exalta- 
Apollo Belvideke. tion." 211 

Blumenbach describes a Greek skull — with one exception, the 
most beautiful head in his collection — in the following terms: "The 
Kg. 33. form of the calvaria sub-globular ; the fore- 

head most nobly arched ; the superior max- 
illary bones, just beneath the nasal aperture, 
joined in a plane almost perpendicular ; the 
malar bones even, and sloping moderately 
downwards." 2l2 Fig. 33, borrowed from the 
first volume of Prichard's Researches, repre- 
sents the skull of a Greek, named Constan- 
tine Demetriades, a native of Corfu, and for 
a long time a teacher of the Modern Greek 
lano-uas-e at Oxford. 213 The Mortonian Col- 
lection is indebted to Prof. Retzius for the cast of the skull of a young 
Greek, which in its general form and character very much resembles 
the above figure from Prichard. I find the calvaria well developed ; 
the frontal region expansive and prominent ; the facial line departs 





Gkeee 



»» Cran. Amer., p. 12. 
a 2 Becas Sexta, p. 6. 



211 Man and Monkeys, p. 223. 
213 Op. cit., p. xvii. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 311 

but slightly from the perpendicular, and the facial angle consequently 
approaches a right angle. A small and regularly-formed face, devoid 
of asperities, harmonizes well with the general intellectual character 
of the head proper. The malar bones are small, flat, and smooth, 
with just enough lateral prominence to give to the face an oval out- 
line ; the alveolar margins of the maxillse are regularly arched, and 
the teeth perpendicular. 

Crossing the Gulf of Venice, we next encounter the Roman form 
of head — " a striking type," to use the language of Dr. Wiseman, 
" essentially the same, from the wreathed image of Seipio's tomb, 
to Trajan or Vespasian, consisting in a large and fiat head; a low 
and wide forehead ; a face, in childhood, heavy and round — later, 
broad and square ; a short and thick neck, and a stout and broad 
figure. ISTor need we go far to find their descendants ; they are to 
be found every day in the streets, principally among the burgesses, 
or middle class, the most invariable portion of any population." 214 
Blumenbach presents us with the figure of the skull of a Roman 
praetorian soldier, and accompanies it with the following description : 

" General form very fine and symmetrical ; calvaria sub-globose, terminating anteriorly 
in a forehead elegantly smoothed ; glabella and superciliary arches moderately prominent ; 
nasal bones of a medium form, neither depressed nor aquiline ; cheek-bones descending 
gently from the lower and outer margin of the orbits, not protuberant as in Negroes, nor 
broadly expanded as in Mongols; jaws with, the alveolar arches and rows of teeth well- 
rounded ; external occipital protuberance very broad and prominent." 215 

Sandifort figures a Roman skull, and speaks of the broad, smooth, 
and perpendicular foi'ehead ; the even vertex, rising at the posterior 
part ; the lateral globosity, and general oblong form. 216 According 
to Morton, " the Roman head differs from the Greek in having the 
forehead low and more arched, and the nose strongly aquiline, 
together with a marked depression of the nasal bones between the 
eyes." 217 Martin speaks of the Roman skull as well-formed, "the 
forehead remarkable rather for breadth than elevation ; eyes mode- 
rately large ; a raised and usually aquiline nose ; full and firmly 
moulded lips; a large lower jaw, and a prominent chin, distinguish 
the Roman ; and an expression in which pride, sternness, and daring 
are blended, complete the picture of 'broad-fronted Caesar.' " 218 Dr. 
Edwards, after critically examining the busts of the early Emperors, 
thus describes the Roman type of head : 

" The vertical diameter is short, and the face, consequently, broad. The flattened sum- 
mit of the cranium, and the almost horizontal lower margin of the jaw, cause the contour 

214 Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, p. 152. 

215 Decades, 4to, p. 7. HG Tabulse Craniorum diversarum Nationum, P. I. 
a ' Crania Americana, p. 13. 218 Man and Monkeys, p. 223. 



312 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



of the head, as viewed in front, to approximate decidedly to a square. The lateral parts 
above the ears are protuberant; the forehead low; the nose truly aquiline. — the curvature 
beginning near the top and ending before reaching the point, the base being horizontal ; 
the chin is round, and the stature short." 219 

Prof. Eetzius describes, in the following terms, a " Schadel ernes 
romischen Kriegers," taken from an ancient cemetery at York: 

" This skull is very large, in length as well as in breadth, though of the dolicho-cephalic 
(Iranian) form. It is broader above towards the vertex, than below towards the base. 
The arch of its upper or coronal surface and the vertex are somewhat flat; the circum- 
ference, seen from above, is a long, wedge-like oval, terminating posteriorly in a short, 
obtuse angle. Forehead broad, well arched, but rather low ; superciliary ridges small ; 
malar processes of the frontal bone small, not prominent ; no frontal protuberances ; temples 
rounded and projecting ; parietal protuberances large, forming lateral angles in a posterior 
view, and standing far apart; the semi-circular temporal ridge elevated towards the vertex ; 
occiput broad, rounded, the protuberance rather prominent ; the sagittal suture slightly 
depressed, especially in the posterior part; receptaculum cerebelli large, &c." 220 

Dr. Thurnam figures and minutely describes, in Crania Britannica, 
the skull of Theodorianus, found in a Roman sarcophagus at York 

(the ancient Eburaeum), erected 
probably during the third cen- 
tury of our sera. He informs 
us that this skull (Fig. 34) is 
a very fine example of the an- 
cient Roman cranium ; that it 
is unusually capacious, its di- 
mensions being much above the 
average in almost every direc- 
tion; that the forehead, though 
low, is remarkable for breadth ; 
that the coronal surface presents 
an oval outline, and is notable 
for its great transverse diameter; 
that the parietal region is full 
and rounded ; the temporal fossse large ; the mastoid processes 
unusually large, broad, and prominent ; the occipital bone full and 
prominent, especially in its upper half; the frontal sinuses and the 
glabella full and large ; the nasal bones very large and broad, with 
a finely aquiline profile; the lachrymal bones and canals large; the 
face square and broad ; the superior maxillae somewhat unduly promi- 
nent along the alveolar margin, and thus giving a slightly prognathic 
character to the face ; the bony palate wide and deep, &c. 22! 

219 Op. cit. 

220 Kraniologisches von A. Retzius, in Mailer's Archiv fur Anat., Phys., &c. Jahr., 
1849. p. 576. 

221 Op. cit., p. (3). See, also, a paper "On the Crania of the Ancient Romans," read by 
Mr. J. B. Davis, before the British Association. Sept., 1855. 




Ancient Roman. 



OF THE RAGES OF MEN. 



313 



One of the long-vexed, but still unsolved problems of the histo- 
rian and the ethnologist, is the origin and affiliations of the ancient 
Etruscans. Whether they were emigrants from a foreigu land, as, 
with very few exceptions, the traditions of the ancients imply, or 
whether, as most modern writers contend, they are really indigence, 
is still an open question. Possessing a civilization stretching back to, 
perhaps, about 1000 years b. c, a cultivated literature and great phy- 
sical science, an elaborate religious system, whose machinery rivalled 
in complexity the colossal Theisms of Hindostan and Egypt, and an 
artistic development of a high, and in some respects peculiar order, 
they excelled all the early nations of Europe,, except the Greeks, when 
in their palmiest days. Their language was cognate with older forms 
of the Hellenic and Latin tongues ; but, judging from the figures 
represented upon the coverings of sarcophagi, in painted tombs, and 
on ceramic productions, their physical characters distinguished them 
effectually from the surrounding nations. According to Prof. K. 0. 
Miiller, the proportions observed in these figures indicate a race of 
small stature, with great heads ; short, thick arms, and a clumsy and 
inactive conformation of body, the " obesos et pingues Etruseos." 
They appear to have possessed large, round faces ; a thick and rather 
short nose, large eyes, a well-marked and prominent chin. 232 Ed- 
wards, however, speaks of observing among, the peasantry of Tus- 
cany (ancient Etruria), in the statues and busts of the Medici family, 
and in the bas-reliefs and effigies of the great men of the Florentine 
Republic, a type of head characterized by its length and narrowness, 
by a considerable frontal development, by a long, sharp-pointed, and 
arched nose. 

The Galerie Anthropolo- Fi S- 35 - 

ffique, at Paris, contains a 
" Crane etrusque donne par le 
Prince Charles Bonaparte," 
from a photograph of which 
the accompanying figure was 
reduced. The reader will ob- 
serve the peculiar conforma- 
tion of this skull; the rude 
massiveness of structure, the 
elevation of the frontal region, 
the flatness of the crown, and 
the downward inclination of 
the parietal bones towards the full and rounded occiput. 




Crane etru.sque. 



The 



222 O. Miiller, Abhandlung der Berlin, Aknd. 1818 und 1819, cited by Prichard, in " Re- 
searches," &c, iii. 256: — but, see, on these philological and archaeological questions, 
M. Maury's Chap. I., and M. Pulszky's Chap. II., in this volume, ante. 



314 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 




description of Miiller coincides very well with the appearance of 

this skull. 

Fi s- 36 - In Fig. 36 the reader has 

before him another peculiar 
type — and a unique speci- 
men — of skull, that of the 
Ancient Phcenicians, the sea- 
wanderers (a name their habits 
suggest and justify), the bold 
navigators and commercial 
traders of antiquity, who, as 
early as the sixth century, 
b. c, had dared the waters of 
Phoenician, the Atlantic, and, perhaps, 

doubled the Cape of Good 

Hope in their fearless explorations ; and whose language, after being 

lost for nearly two thousand years, has lately been deciphered, and its 

long-hidden secrets revealed to the world. 223 

"I received this highly interesting relic," says Dr. Morton, "from M. F. Fresnel, the 
distinguished French archaeologist and traveller [since deceased, February, 1856, at 
Bagdad, in the midst of Ninevite explorations], with the following memorandum, a. d. 
1847: — 'Crane provenant des caves sepulchrales de Ben-Djemma, dans Vile de Malte. 
Ce crane parait avoir appartenu a un individu de la race qui, dans les temps les plus 
anciens, occupait la cote septentrionale de VAfrique, et les lies adjaeentes.' " 224 

This cranium is the one alluded to in the interesting anecdote 
narrated by the late Dr. Patterson, in his graceful Memoir, as 
illustrating the wonderful power of discrimination, the taotus visus, 
acquired by Dr. Morton in his long and critical study of cranio- 
graphy. 225 From this circumstance, and from the many singular 
and interesting associations inseparably connected with its antiquity, 
its introduction here cannot fail to be received with a lively sense 
of interest by those engaged in these studies. It is in many respects 
a peculiar skull. In a profile view, the eye quickly notices the 
remarkable length of the occipito-mental diameter. This feature 
gives to the whole head an elongated appearance, which is much 
heightened by the general narrowness of the calvaria, the backward 
slope of the occipital region, and the strong prognathous tendency 
of the maxillas. The contour of the coronal region is a long oval, 
which recalls to the mind the kumbe-kephalic form of Wilson. 
The moderately well-developed forehead is notable for its regularity. 
In its form and general characters the face is sui generis. It may 



22 3 See Pulszky's Chap. I., p. 129-137, ante. 

224 See Morton's Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals. 
No. 1352. 

225 See Types of Mankind, p. xl. 



Philada., 1849. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 315 

not inaptly be compared to a double wedge, for tbe facial bones are 
not only inclined downwards and remarkably forward, thus tapering 
towards tbe chin, bnt also in consequence of tbe flatness of tbe 
malar bones and tbe inferior maxillary rami they appear laterally 
compressed, sloping gently, on both sides, from behind forwards, 
towards the median line. The lower jaw is large, and much thrown 
forwards. The slope of the superior maxilla forms an angle with 
tbe horizon of about 45°. Notwithstanding this inclination of the 
maxilla, the incisor teeth are so curved as to be nearly vertical. 
Hence the prognathism of the jaws is quite peculiar, differing, as it 
does, from that of the Eskimo cranium already alluded to, and from 
the true African skulls presently to be noticed. 

In the consideration of European types, we pass next to the sup- 
posed primeval home of the human family. In the mountainous 
but fertile region of tbe Caucasus, extending from the Euxine to the 
Caspian Seas, dwell numerous tribes, speaking mutually unintelli- 
gible languages, and differing in physical characters. From this 
region were the harems of the Turk and Persian supplied with those 
beautiful Georgian and Circassian females, who have, to no small 
extent, imparted their physical excellence to the former people. 
Some idea of the multiplicity of languages spoken in this small area 
may be obtained from a fact mentioned by Pliny, that at Dioscurias, 
a small sea-port town, the ancient commerce with the Greeks and 
Romans was carried on through the intervention of one hundred and 
thirty interpreters. 

This Caucasian group of races, comprising the Circassian or Kabar- 
dian race, the Absne or Abassians, tbe Oseti or Iron, the Mizjeji, the 
Lesgians, and the Georgians, is classed by Latham, singularly enough, 
with the Mongoliclse. In alluding to their physical conformation, he 
speaks of them as "modified Mongols," although he confesses his 
inability to answer the patent physiological objections to such an 
arrangement — objections based upon the symmetry of shape and 
delicacy of complexion on the part of the Georgians and Circassians. 

"The really scientific portion of these anatomical reasons" (for connecting the above 
group with the European nations), says he, "consists in a single fact, which was as follows: 
— Blumenbach had a solitary Georgian skull, and that solitary Georgian skull was the finest 
in his collection, that of a Greek being the next. Hence, it was taken as the type of the 
skull of the more organized divisions of our species. More than this, it gave its name to 
the type, and introduced the term Caucasian. Never has a single head done more harm to 
science than was done in the way of posthumous mischief, by the head of this well-shaped 
female from Georgia. I do not say that it was not a fair sample of all Georgian skulls. It 
might or might not be. I only lay before critics the amount of induction that they have 
gone upon." 226 

226 The Varieties of Man, pp. 105, 111, 108. The attention of the reader is directed to 
the following paragraph, descriptive of the Georgian cranium referred to above. "The 
form of this head is of such distinguished elegance, that it attracts the attention of all who 



316 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 




Circassian (764). 



Fig- 37. Now Morton's Collection con- 

tains four well-marked Circas- 
sian heads, — two male and two 
female, — which, although they 
do not strictly coincide in struc- 
ture and configuration with the 
Georgian skull, nevertheless ap- 
proximate more decidedly the 
Japhetic or European form than 
the Mongolian, as will be seen 
by the annexed cut and descrip- 
tion of one of these crania, that 
of a man, setat. 40 years, and 
exhibiting an internal capacity of 90 cubic inches. The calvaria is 
well developed and regularly arched, and in size considerably exceeds 
the face. The proportions between the vertical, transverse, and lon- 
gitudinal diameters are such as to convey to the eye an impression 
of harmony and regularity of structure. The high and broad fore- 
head forms with the parietal region a continuous and symmetrical 
convexity. The occiput is full and prominent. The face is strongly 
marked ; the orbits moderate in size ; the nasal bones prominent ; 
the malar bones small and rounded ; the teeth vertical ; the maxillae 
of medium size, and the chin prominent. The fulness of the face, 
its oval contour, and general want of angularity, decidedly separate 
this head from the Mongolian type, as represented by the Kalmuck 
skull already figured and described. Did space permit, other differ- 
ences could readily be pointed out. 

These characters accord very well with the descriptions of these 
people, given us by different travellers. The Circassians who call 
themselves Attighe or Adige (Zychi of the Greeks and Latins, Tcher- 
kess of the Russians) have always been celebrated for their personal 
charms. Mr. Spencer says that, among the ISTottahaizi tribe, every 
individual he saw was decidedly handsome. 227 " The men," says 

visit the collection in which it is contained. The vertical and frontal regions form a large 
and smooth convexity, which is a little flattened at the temples ; the forehead is high and 
broad, and carried forwards perpendicularly over the face. The cheek-bones are small, 
descending from the outer side of the orbit, and gently turned back. The superciliary 
ridges run together at the root of the nose, and are smoothly continued into the bridge of 
that organ, which forms an elegant and finely-turned arch. The alveolar processes are 
softly rounded, and the chin is full and prominent. In the whole structure, there is nothing 
rough or harsh, nothing disagreeably projecting. Hence, it occupies a middle place between 
the two opposite extremes, of the Mongolian variety, in which the face is flattened, and 
expanded laterally ; and the Ethiopian, in which the forehead is contracted, and the jaws 
also are narrow and elongated anteriorly." — Lawrence, op. cit., p. 228. 
221 Travels in Circassia, ii., 245. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 317 

Pallas, " especially among the higher classes, are mostly of a tall 
stature, thin form, but Herculean structure. They are very slender 
about the loins, have small feet, and uncommon strength in their 
arms. They possess, in general, a truly Roman and martial appear- 
ance. The women are not uniformly Circassian beauties, but are, 
for the most part, well formed, have a white skin, dark-brown or 

black hair, and regular features I have met with a greater 

number of beauties among them than in any other unpolished 
nation." 228 Says Klaproth, — " They have brown hair and eyes, long 
faces, thin, straight noses, and elegant forms." ^ "Their profile 
approaches nearest the Grecian model," writes Morton, " and falls 
little short of the beau-ideal of classic sculpture." 230 The Abassians, 
probably autochthones of the north-west Caucasus, — " are distin- 
guished from all the neighbouring nations by their narrow faces, by 
the figure of their heads, which are compressed on both sides, by the 
shortness of the lower part of the face, by their prominent noses and 
dark-brown hair." 231 From all accounts, the Georgians, "a people 
of European features and form," are but little, if at all, inferior to 
the Circassians in physical endowments. According to Reineggs, 
the Georgian women are even more beautiful than the Circassians. 232 
"Le sang de Georgie," says Chardin, "est le plus beau de l'Orient, 
et je puis dire, du monde. Je n'ai pas remarque un visage laid en 
ce pays-M, parmi l'un et 1' autre sexe, mais j'y en ai vu d'ange- 
liques." 233 

The extreme south-eastern section of the European ethnic area, 
occupying mainly the table-land of Iran, is represented in the Mor- 
tonian Collection by six Armenian, two Persian, and one Aflghan 
skull. A general family resemblance pervades all these crania. 
They are all, with one exception, remarkable for the smallness of the 
face, and shortness of head. In the Armenian skull, the forehead is 
narrow but well formed, the convexity expanding upwards and back- 
wards towards the parietal protuberances, and laterally towards the 
temporal bones. The greatest transverse diameter is between the 
parietal bosses. This feature, combined with the flatness of the oc- 
ciput, gives to the coronal region an outline somewhat resembling a 
triangle with all three angles truncated, and the base of the triangle 
looking posteriorly. In fact, the whole form of the calvaria is such 
as to impress the mind of the observer with a sense of squareness 

228 Travels in Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire, I. 398. 

229 Travels in Caucasian Countries. 

230 Crania Americana, p. 8. m Klaproth, Caucasus, p. 257. 

232 Allgemeine historische-topographische Beschreibung des Knukasus. 

233 Voyages en Perse, I., 171. 



318 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

and angularity. The dimensions of the orbits are moderate ; the 
malar bones small, flat, and retreating; the zygomatic processes 
slender, and the general expression of the face resembling that of the 
Circassians, from which latter it differs in being shorter. The Per- 
sian head is less angular, the frontal region broader, the occiput 
fuller, and the malar bones larger. The lower jaw is small and 
rather round. The Affghan skull — that of a boy, aged about six- 
teen years — resembles, in several respects, the Hindoo type already 
described. 

The Syro-Arabian or Semitic race, comprising the Arabians, As- 
syrians, Chaldseans, Hebrews, and cognate tribes, also falls within 
the European area. 

" The physical conformation of the Arabs proper," says Morton, 
" is not very unlike that of their neighbors, the Circassians, although, 
especially in the women, it possesses much less of the beautiful. . . . 
The Arab face is a somewhat elongated oval, with a delicately-pointed 
chin, and a high forehead. Their eyes are large, dark, and full of 
vivacity ; their eye-brows are finely arched ; the nose is narrow and 
gently aquiline, the lips thin, and the mouth small and expressive." 234 
In another place, he says : " The head (of the southern or peninsular 
Arabs) is, moreover, comparatively small, and the forehead rather 
narrow and sensibly receding ; to which may often be added a meagre 
and angular figure, 235 long, slender limbs, and large knees." 236 Mr. 
Frazer thus describes the physiognomy of the genuine Arabs. " The 
countenance was generally long and thin ; the forehead moderately 
high, with a rounded protuberance near its top ; the nose aquiline ; 
the mouth and chin receding, giving to the line of the profile a cir- 
cular rather than a straight character; the eye deep set under the 
brow, dark, and bright." 237 According to De Pages, the Arabs of 
the desert between Bassora and Damascus have a large, ardent, black 
eye, a long face, features high and regular, and, as the result of the 
whole, a physiognomy peculiarly stern and severe." 238 

The famous Baron Larret asserts that the skulls of the Arabians 
display " a most perfect development of all the internal organs, as 

well as of those which belong to the senses Independently 

of the elevation of the vault of the cranium, and its almost spherical 
form, the surface of the jaws is of great extent, and lies in a straight 
or perpendicular line ; the orbits, likewise, are wider than they are 

234 Cran. Americana, p. 18. 

235 "Tontes leurs formes sont anguleuses," says Denon; "leur barbe courte et & meches 
pointues." Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 92. 

236 Cran. JEgyptiaca, p. 47. 237 Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan. 
238 Travels round the World. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



319 



usually seen in the crania of Europeans, and they are somewhat less 
inclined backwards ; the alveolar arches are of moderate size, and 
they are well supplied with very white and regular teeth ; the canines, 
especially, project but little. The Arabs eat little, and seldom of 
animal food. We are also convinced that the bones of the cranium 
are thinner in the Arab than in other races, and more dense in 
proportion to their size, which is proved by their greater transpa- 
rency." 239 

The reader will obtain some idea of the Arabian cranial type from 
the subjoined figure, representing several Bedawees of the Isthmus 
of Suez (Nos. 766-770, of the Mortonian Collection.) 

Fig. 38. 




Akabs (B^dawes of Isthmus). 

Figs. 39 and 40 represent the profile and facial views of an ancient 
Assyrian skull, obtained, by Dr. Layakd, from an ancient mound, 



Fig. 39. 



Fig. 40. 





Ancient Assteian. 



and now deposited in the British Museum. The representations 
here given are reductions from natural-size drawings sent to Dr. 
ISTott by Mr. J. B. Davis, of Shelton, Staffordshire, who, in an 



2S 9 Comptes Rendus, t. 6, p. 774. 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



accompanying letter, vouches for their general accuracy and faith- 
fulness to nature. 

" This skull," says Dr. Nott, "isTery interesting, in several points of view. Its immense 
size confirms history by showing that none but a high ' Caucasian' race could have achieved 
so much greatness. The measurements taken from the drawing are — 
Longitudinal diameter, 7J inches. 
Transverse " 5f " 

Vertical " 5£ " 

" It is probable that the parietal diameter is larger than the measurement here given ; 
because, possessor of only front and profile views, I think these may not express fairly 
the posterior parts of the head. There are but two heads in Morton's whole Egyptian 
series of equal size, and these are 'Pelasgic;' nor more than two equally large throughout 
his American series. Daniel Webster's head measured — longitudinal diameter, 7-J inches; 
transverse, 5| ; vertical, 5 J : and comparison will show that the Assyrian head is but a 
fraction the smaller of the two. 240 

" This Assyrian head, moreover, is remarkable for its close resemblance to several of 
Morton's Egyptian series, classed under the ' Pelasgic form.' It thus adds another 
powerful confirmation to the fact this volume ('Types of Mankind') establishes, viz., 
that the Egyptians, at all monumental times, were a mixed people, and in all historical 
ages were much amalgamated with Chaldaic races. Any one, familiar with crania, who 
will compare this Assyrian head with the beautiful Egyptian series lithographed in the 
Crania JEgypliaca, cannot fail to be struck with its resemblance to many of the latter, even 
more forcibly than anatomists will, through our small, if accurate, wood-cuts." 

Kg. 41. The familiar Hebraic type is very 

well shown in Fig. 41 (No. 842 of the 
Mortonian Collection), representing a 
mummied cranium, taken from an 
Egyptian sepulchre. " This head," 
writes Morton, "possesses great in- 
terest, on account of its decided He- 
brew features, of which many ex- 
amples are extant on the monu- 
ments" (of Egypt). The fragmentary 
colossal head from Kouyunjik (Fig. 42, on next page), affords an excel- 
lent idea of the higher and more ancient Chaldaeic type. 

I hasten to complete the consideration of Caucasian types by refer- 
ring briefly to the peculiarities presented by Egyptian crania. Dr. 

210 But even the head of Webster is surpassed by the skull of a German baker, in the 
Museum of the University of Louisville, which Prof. T. G. Richardson, with the assistance 
of Prof. B. Silliman, Jr., found to possess the extraordinary internal capacity of 125.77 
cubic inches, and to present the following external measurements : 

Occipitofrontal, or longitudinal diameter 8J- inches. 

Bi-parietal, or transverse diameter 6J 

Vertical diameter , 6i 

Circumference 23 J 

Over the vertex, between the centres of the auditory meatuses... 14f 
See Elements of Human Anatomy. By T. G. Richardson, M. D. Philada., 1854, p. 167. 




OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



321 



Morton's severely learned and ac- Fi s- 42. 

curate labors in this field are too 
well known to the scientific world 
to render necessary in this place any 
lengthened craniographic description 
of the exceedingly ancient and highly 
civilized occupants of the classic Nilo- 
tic a Tellus. Premising that the popu- 
lation of Egypt, even in very remote 
times, was exceedingly mixed, that 
the ancient sepulchres of the Nile 
contain Negroid as well as Caucasian 
crania, and that, among the latter, 
Morton distinguished three distinct 
forms or varieties — the Egyptian pro- 
per, the Pelasgic, and Semitic, — I 
proceed to give the reader some idea of the first two of these varieties, 
by means of the following concise exfracts and expressive illustrations, 
taken at random from Crania ^Egyptiaca. 

" The Egyptian form differs from the Pelasgic in having a narrow 
and more receding forehead, while, the face being more prominent, 
the facial angle is consequently less. The nose is straight or aqui- 
line, the face angular, the features often sharp, and the hair uniformly 
long, soft, and curling The subjoined wood-cut (Eig. 43) 




Fie. 43. 




Fi« 




fifii 

flitfli 



"-■:■, 



Fig. 45. 



Fig. 46. 





21 



322 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



illustrates a remarkable head, which may serve as a type of the genu- 
ine Egyptian conformation. The long oval cranium, the receding 
forehead, gently aquiline nose, and retracted chin, together with the 
marked distance between the nose and mouth, and the long, smooth 
hair, are all characteristic of the monumental Egyptian," and well 
shown in Eigs. 44, 45, 46 (retro). " To this we may add, that the most 
deficient part of the Egyptian skull is the coronal region, which is 
extremely low, while the posterior chamber is remarkably full and 
prominent." 

The Pelasgic form is represented in Eig. 47 — "A beautifully- 
formed head, with a forehead high, full, 
and nearly vertical, a good coronal region, 
and largely developed occiput. The nasal 
bones are long and straight, and the whole 
facial structure delicately proportioned. 
Age between 30 and 35 years. Internal 
capacity 88 cubic inches; facial angle 81°. 
Pelasgic form," — and in Eig. 48, — "Head 



Fig. 47. 




Fig. 48. 



Fig. 49. 





of a woman of thirty, of a fault- 
less Caucasian mould. The hair, 
which is in profusion, is of a dark 
brown tint, and delicately curled. 

Pelasgic form." Eig. 49, originally delineated in Napoleon's Description 
de VEgypte, admirably illustrates the Egyptian type or configuration. 
Of the Eellahs of Lower Egypt, the lineal descendants of the ancient 
rural Egyptians, an excellent idea may be obtained from, the engrav- 
ing on next page (Fig. 50), representing five skulls of this people. 
" The skull of the Fellah is strikingly like that of the ancient Egyp- 
tian. It is long, narrow, somewhat flattened on the sides, and very 
prominent in the occiput. The coronal region is low, the forehead 
moderately receding, the nasal bones long and nearly straight, the 
cheek-bones small, the maxillary region slightly prognathous, and 
the whole cranial structure thin and delicate. But, notwithstanding 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 
Fig. 50. 



323 




these resemblances between the Fellah and Egyptian skulls, the latter 
possess what may be called an osteological expression peculiar to 
themselves, and not seen in the Fellah." 

According to Pruner, the skull of the Fellah is broader and 
thicker than that of the Arab. 241 

Fig. 51 represents a Coptic cranium, which Morton describes as 
"elongated, narrow, but Y 51 

otherwise mediately de- 
veloped in front, with 
great breadth and fulness 
in the whole posterior re- 
gion. The nasal bones, 
though prominent, are 
broad, short, and concave, 
and the upper jaw is 
everted. There is also a 
remarkable distance be- 
tween the eyes." 242 

Turn we now to the consideration of the human skull-types cha- 
racterizing the so-called African Realm — a region cut off, as it were, 
from the rest of the world by the vast Saharan Desert, once the bed 
of an ancient ocean, but now constituting a natural line of demarca- 
tion between the organic worlds of Europe and Africa. 

A glance at a large chart or map of the African continent, as at 
present known to us, reveals the various races or nations of this 
part of the world, distributed in a somewhat triangular manner. 
The apex of this triangle, composed of the Hottentot family, coin- 
cides with the southern extremity of the continent ; the two sides 
are represented by the tribes of the western and eastern coasts ; 
while the base, skirting the sands of Sahara, and stretching from 




241 Die Ueberbleibsel der altagyptischen Menschenra9e. Von Dr. Franz Pruner, Miinchen, 
1846, p. 13. 

242 Crania iEgyptiaca, p. 57. 



324 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, north of the Mountains of the 
Moon, is composed of numerous and diversified tribes, who, under 
the influences of Arabian, Berber, and other foreign immigrations, 
have assumed, in general, a higher character than those of the South 
African family. This triangular area of African types incloses a 
terra incognita, towards which the ethnologist already looks for 
remarkable revelations. 243 It would require many pages to describe 
the cranial characters of the numerous indigenous and exotic tribes 
— some exceedingly ancient, and some quite modern — which the 
traveller beholds in journeying from Cape Verde to Abyssinia, thence 
to the Cape of Good Hope, and so to the point of departure on the 
western coast. A very brief representation, therefore, of some of 
the principal cranial types must here suffice. 

Bltjmenbach has already commented upon the number and diversity 
of African skull-forms. He figures six African heads in the Decades, 
all differing from each other in frontal development, prominence 
of the maxilla?, configuration of chin, &c. This diversity of form 
is still better shown by the African heads contained in the Mortonian 
Collection ; from which series I select, as the peculiar type of Africa, 
not the highest, but a specimen of the lowest form — that of the 
woolly-haired, prognathous man, the true Negro (Eig. 52, on next 
page). In doing so, I but follow the example of Lawrence, and the 
advice of Muller, Zeune, and others. That the head here figured 

243 At a meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, held October 16th, 
1855, " Mr. Cassin announced, that M. Duchaillu was about to return to Western Africa, for 
the purpose, exclusively, of geographical exploration, and the collection of objects of Natural 
History. Arrangements have been made to secure, for the cabinet of this Society, the 
collections of Birds especially, and also of some other objects. Mr. Cassin explained the 
general design of the Expedition, -which was to pass from Cape Lopez, 1° S. latitude, 
towards the supposed source of the Congo River, with the intention of attempting to reach 
its source. Mr. Duchaillu has already penetrated farther into the interior of this part 
of Africa than any other white man. The coast is unknown farther inland than from 
twenty to twenty-five miles, except to slavers, there having been no exploration of that 
part of Africa. M. Duchaillu had been on the Rivers Moonda and Mouni, had traced the 
latter to its source, and had ascertained the existence of high mountains, probably a con- 
tinuation or spur of the Atlas range, and much further south than is to be found in any 
published maps. Another fact ascertained by him, is the existence of a very populous 
nation, of marked Negro character, known as the Powein Nation, which he estimates at 
from five to seven millions. Their country extends across from the sources of the Moonda, 
probably to the sources of the Nile, and the nation is probably that mentioned by Bruce, as 
occasionally descending the Nile. It is a warlike and cannibal nation, engaged in agri- 
culture, not wandering, resembling in this respect the Ashantees and Dahomeys. It dis- 
plays the highest degree of civilization yet observed among the true Negroes, presenting 
an analogy to the Feejees, among the Oceanic nations. M. Duchaillu possesses peculiar 
advantages as an explorer. He has lived long in the country, is entirely acclimated, speaks 
well two of the languages, and understands thoroughly the Negro character. He proposes 
to proceed merely with convoys of natives from each tribe successively to the next." 




OF THE KACES OF MEN. 325 

(No. 983 of the Collection) is Fig. 52. 

neither an unusual nor exagge- 
rated form, is rendered evident 
by comparing it with the Creole 
Negro given in the first volume of 
Prichard's laborious Researches 
into the Physical History of Man- 
kind, with the drawings of Sandi- 
fort, 244 and Camper, 245 or with the 
skull represented on Plate VIII. Negko. 

of Lawrence' 's Lectures. Indeed, 

this latter drawing presents a more degraded form than the accom- 
panying figure. The general typical resemblance, however, is so 
great, that I transcribe, without hesitation and for self-evident rea- 
sons, the following description by Lawrence : 

" The front of the head, including the forehead and face, is compressed laterally, and 
considerably elongated towards the front; hence the length of the whole skull, from the 
teeth to the occiput, is considerable. It forms, in this respect, the strongest contrast to 
that globular shape which some of the Caucasian races present, and which is very remark- 
able in the Turk. — The capacity of the cranium is reduced, particularly in its front 
part. . . . The face, on the contrary, is enlarged. The frontal bone is shorter, and, as 
well as the parietal, less excavated and less capacious than in the European ; the temporal 
ridge mounts higher, and the space which it includes is much more considerable. The 
front of the skull seems compressed into a narrow keel-like form between the two powerful 
temporal muscles, which rise nearly to the highest part of the head ; and has a compressed 
figure, which is not equally marked in the entire head, on account of the thickness of the 
muscles. Instead of the ample swell of the forehead and vertex, which rises between and 
completely surmounts the comparatively weak temporal muscles of the European, we often 
see only a small space left between the two temporal ridges in the Ethiopian. — The fora- 
men magnum is larger, and lies farther back in the head ; the other openings for the 
passage of the nerves are larger. — The bony substance is denser and harder ; the sides 
of the skull thicker, and the whole weight consequently more considerable. — The bony 
apparatus employed in mastication, and in forming receptacles for the organs of sense, is 
larger, stronger, and more advantageously constructed for powerful effect, than in the 
races where more extensive use of experience and reason, and greater civilization, supply 
the place of animal strength. — If the bones of the face in the Negro were taken as a basis, 
and a cranium were added to them of the same relative magnitude which it possesses in the 
European, a receptacle for the brain would be required much larger than in the latter case. 
However, we find it considerably smaller. Thus the intellectual part is lessened, the ani- 
mal organs are enlarged: proportions are produced just opposite to those which are found 
in the Grecian ideal model. . . . The narrow, low, and slanting forehead, and the elonga- 
tion of the jaws into a kind of muzzle, give to this head an animal character, which cannot 
escape the most cursory examination. ... It is sufficiently obvious, that on a vertical 

«* Museum Acad. Lugd. Batav., t. 1, tab. 3. 

245 Dissertat sur les Varietfe Naturelles, &c, tab. I., fig. 3. — Since writing the above, a 
number of human crania and casts, formerly belonging to Dr. Harlan's Collection, have 
been presented to the Academy, by Mr. Harlan. Among these, is the cast of a Mozambique 
skull, closely resembling the heads above alluded to. 



326 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

antero-posterior section of the head, the area of the face will be more considerable in pro- 
portion to that of the cranium, in such a skull, than in the fine European forms. — The 
larger and stronger jaws require more powerful muscles. The temporal fossa is much 
larger ; the ridge which bounds it rises higher on the skull, and is more strongly marked, 
than in the European. The thickness of the muscular mass may be estimated from the 
bony arch, within which it descends to the lower jaw. The zygoma is larger, stronger, 
and more capacious in the Negro ; the cheek-bones project remarkably, and are very 
strong, broad, and thick: hence they afford space for the attachment of powerful mas- 
seters. — The orbits, and particularly their external apertures, are capacious. — Both 
entrances to the nose are more ample, the cavity itself considerably more capacious, the 
plates and windings of the ethmoid bone more complicated, the cribriform lamella more 
extensive, than in the European. The ossa nasi are flat and short, instead of forming the 
bridge-like convexity which we see in the European. They run together above into an 
acute angle, which makes them considerably resemble the single triangular nasal bone 
of the monkey. . . . The superior maxillary bone is remarkably prolonged in front ; its alveo- 
lar portion and the included incisor teeth are oblique, instead of being perpendicular, as in 
the European. The nasal spine at the entrance of the nose is either inconsiderable, or 
entirely deficient. The palatine arch is longer and more elliptical. The alveolar edge 
of the lower jaw stands forward, like that of the upper ; and this part in both is narrow, 
elongated, and elliptical. The chin, instead of projecting equally with the teeth, as it 
does in the European, recedes considerably like that of the monkey. — The characters 
of the Ethiopian variety, as observed in the genuine Negro tribes, may be thus summed 
up : 1. Narrow and depressed forehead ; the entire cranium contracted anteriorly : the 
cavity less, both in its circumference and transverse measurements. 2. Occipital foramen 
and condyles placed farther back. 3. Large space for the temporal muscles. 4. Great 
development of the face. 5. Prominence of the jaws altogether, and particularly of their 
alveolar margins and teeth ; consequent obliquity of the facial line. 6. Superior incisors 
slanting. 7. Chin receding. 8. Very large and strong zygomatic arch projecting towards 
the front. 9. Large nasal cavity. 10. Small and flattened ossa nasi, sometimes consoli- 
dated, and running into a point above. — In all the particulars just enumerated, the Negro 
structure approximates unequivocally to that of the Monkey. It not only differs from the 
Caucasian model, but is distinguished from it in two respects ; the intellectual characters 
are reduced, the animal features enlarged, and exaggerated. In such a skull as that repre- 
sented in the eighth plate, wkick, indeed, has been particularly selected, because it is strongly 
characterized, no person, however little conversant with natural history or physiology, could 
fail to recognize a decided approach to the animal form. This inferiority of organization 
is attended with corresponding inferiority of faculties ; which may be proved, not so much 
by the unfortunate beings who are degraded by slavery, as by every fact in the past history 
and present condition of Africa." 246 

Thus much for the cranial physique of the genuine tropical Negro. 
The tribes oi "Western Africa present us with higher forms of the 
skull, and less degraded physical and intellectual traits. These 
tribes, divided by a recent writer and zealous missionary, the Rev. 
J. L. Wilson, into the Senegambians, and the Northern and Southern 
Guineans, 247 for the most part dwell in small isolated communities, 
each composed of a few villages, and having an aggregate population 
varying from two to thirty thousand. Even the kingdoms of Ashantee 

"« Op. cit., pp. 242, 3, 4-6. 

2 J ? Ethnographic View of Western Africa. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 827 

and Dahomey, the largest political organizations of Western Africa, 
are not superior in population and extent of territory to some of the 
smaller European kingdoms. According to Wilson, the inhabitants 
of this region have fixed habitations, cultivate the soil, have herds 
of domestic animals, and have made very considerable progress in 
most of the mechanic arts. That the various tribes differ remarkably 
from each other in physiognomical characters, will be seen from the 
following condensed notice of some of the principal families. 

The Mandingoes, a commercial people occupying the country in 
which the Niger takes its rise, extending through the kingdoms of 
Bambouk, Bambara, and Wuli, and, in smaller or larger groups, cover- 
ing all the country from Jalakonda to the sea-coast, are described by 
Wilson as "men of tall stature, slender, but well-proportioned, black 
complexion, and woolly hair, but with much more regular features 
than belong to the true Negro." According to Goldberry, they 
resemble more the blacks of India, than those of Africa. 248 " The 
appearance of the Mandingoes," says Major Laing, "is engaging; 
their features are regular and open ; their persons well-formed and 
comely, averaging a height rather above the common." 

The Fulahs inhabit Fuladu, north-west of Manding, the region 
between the sources of the Senegal and Niger, and the three large 
Senegambian provinces, Futa-Torro, Futa-Bondu, and Futa-Jallon, 
extending also towards the heart of Soudan. The origin and purity 
of this peculiar people have been much discussed. Linguistically 
and physically, they are distinct from the surrounding tribes over 
whom they rule. They deny their Negro origin, and consider them- 
selves a mixed race. However, " their physical type of character is 
too permanent, and of too long standing, to admit of the idea of an 
intermixture. In all mixed races, there is a strong and constant 
tendency to one or the other of the parent types, and it is difficult to 
point out a mixed breed that has held an intermediate character for 
any considerable time, especially when it has been entirely cut off 
from the sources whence it derived its being. But the Fulahs are 
now, in all their physical characteristics, just what they have been 
for many centuries. And it would seem, therefore, that their com- 
plexion, and other physical traits, entitle them to as distinct and 
independent a national character as either the Arab or Negro, from 
the union of which it is supposed that they have received their 
origin." 219 Goldberry informs us that the color of their skin is a 
kind of reddish black; their countenances are regular, and their 
hair is longer, and not so woolly, as that of the common Negroes ; 

243 Travels in Africa, Vol. I. p. 74. •» Wilson, op. cit, p. 7. 



328 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

their language is altogether different from that of the nations hy 
whom they are surrounded — it is more elegant and sonorous." 250 
Mollien, relying upon traditions extant about the Senegal, thinks 
that the Fulahs migrated along with the Jalofs from North Africa, 
whence they were expelled by the Moors." 251 D'Eichthal assigns 
them a Malayan origin; 252 but the inquiries of Hodgson negative 
this opinion. 253 The Jalofs, a compact and limited people, occupying 
all the maritime districts of Senegambia, as well as a large part of 
the interior, number one million souls, who are distributed into four 
sections, — those of Cayor, Sin, Salem, and Brenk. They are the 
most northern, as well as the most comely, of all the west-coast 
Negroes, and, according to Goldberry, are robust and well-made ; 
their features are regular ; their color a deep and transparent black ; 
hair crisped and woolly ; nose rather round ; lips thick. 254 The Vai 
family, comprising the Timanis, Bulloms, Deys, Condoes, Golahs, 
and Mendas, is one of the principal families of North Guinea. They 
" are very black, of slender frames, but with large and well-formed 
heads, and of a decidedly intellectual cast of countenance." The 
Manou, or Kroo family, comprises the Bassas, Fish, Kroo proper, 
Sestos, Grebo, Drewin, and St. Andrew's people, tribes occupying 
the Liberian coast, between the Bassa and St. Andrew's rivers. 
" The person of the Kruman is large, square-built, and remarkably 
erect. He has an open and manly countenance, and his gait is 
impressively dignified and independent. His head, however, is 
small and peaked, and is not indicative of high intellectual capa- 
city." The Quaquas, with dark complexions, and very large, round 
heads; the Asbantees, of the Inta or Amina family, presenting 
more decided Negro characteristics than the other tribes of this 
region ; the Dahomey family ; and finally, the Benin tribes, a very 
black race of savages, inhabiting the country between Lagos and 
the Kamerun Mountains, complete our rapid glance at the people 
of Northern Guinea. 

The above-mentioned families are represented in the Mortonian 
Collection, by skulls of the Mina, Dey, Grebo, Bassa, Golah, Pessah, 
Kroo, and Eboe tribes. 

The Golah skull (No. 1093), is remarkable for its massiveness and 
density. The calvaria is well-formed, expanding from the frontal 

*o Op. cit, Vol. I. p. 72. ffil Voyages en Afrique, t. I. et II. 

262 Histoire et Origine des Foulahs on Fellans. Par Gustave d'Eichthal — in Memoires 
de la SoeiSte' Ethnologique, t. I. 

253 Notes on Northern Africa, the Sahara and Soudan. By Wm, B. Hodgson. New 
York, 1844. 

»* Op. cit., pp. 74-75. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 329 

region back towards the occiput, which is flat and shelving. The 
two halves of the os frontis form a double inclined plane, whose 
summit coincides with the sagittal suture. The basis cranii is full 
and round, and the mastoid processes large ; nasal bones flat, and 
falling in below the glabella; orbits large, and widely separated; 
malar bones laterally prominent. This latter feature, in conjunction 
with the double inclination of the os frontis, gives to the head a 
pyramidal form. The superior maxilla is distinctly everted at the 
alveolar margin. Another head of the same tribe is longer and 
narrower, and, in consequence of the flatness of the malar bones, has 
less of the pyramidal form. — The calvaria of a Pessah skull (No. 
1095) is oblong in figure ; the forehead flat, and receding ; super- 
ciliary ridges ponderous; malar bones large and flat; upper jaw 
everted ; lower jaw retracted, occiput protuberant. In a Kroo head 
(jSTo. 1098), I find the forehead broad and high ; the calvaria regu- 
larly arched, and having its greatest diameter between the anterior 
and inferior parts of the parietalia ; the occipital region flat and 
shelving downwards and forwards to a small foramen magnum; 
mastoid processes large ; face very broad ; malar bones shelving 
slightly like those of the Eskimo ; inter-orbital space very large ; 
upper jaw slightly everted ; teeth rather small, and vertical ; zygo- 
matic fossse deep. In another Kroo skull, the vertex is flat, the 
forehead recedent, and the jaws more prognathous. The calvaria 
of a Dey skull is narrow in front and broad posteriorly, with a flat 
vertex ; face small, regular, and compact, and, were it not for the 
projection of the superior alveolus, might be considered as almost 
European. The skull of an Eboe (E"o. 1102), presents characters 
similar to those just detailed. It does not coincide with the physical 
descriptions of these people recorded by Oldfield in the London 
Medical and Surgical Journal (October, 1835), and by Edwards in his 
History of the West Indies, but is chiefly remarkable for the great 
obliquity of the orbital opening, and the unusual smallness of the 
mastoid processes. 

Between JSTorth and South Guinea, the Kamerun Mountains 
appear to form a natural ethnographic line of division, rising as 
they do some fourteen thousand feet above the sea-level, and pre- 
senting upon their northern aspect the Old Kabardian language, 
and upon their southern, the Duali — two dialects which, according 
to Mr. "Wilson, are as different from each other, with the exception 
of a few words that they have borrowed by frequent inter-communi- 
cation, as any two dialects that might be selected from the remotest 
parts of the country. All along the coast, from the Kamerun to the 
Cape of Good Hope, an extraordinary diversity of physical type pre- 



330 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

vails among the inhabitants. Thus, in the Gabun alone, Wilsok 
distinguishes at least five very marked types. "1. There is the 
Jewish type, where the profile is strikingly Jewish, the complexion 
either a pale or reddish brown, the head well-formed, figure slender, 
but well-formed, and the hair nearly as woolly as that of the pure 
Neoro. 2. There is another, tbat may be regarded as the Fulah 
type, where the stature is of middle size, complexion a dark brown, 
the face oval, and features regular, the hair in some cases crisp or 
woolly, and in others soft and even silky. 3. The Kaffir type, where 
the frame is large and strong, the complexion a reddish-brown, the 
lips thick, but not turned out, the nose somewhat dilated, but not 
flat like the Negro, the hands and feet well-formed, but the hair is 
crisp or woolly. 4. A type corresponding to the description given 
of the Kamerun and Corisco men, and in some cases showing a 
decided approximation to the features of the Somaulis, represented 
in Prichard's work on the physical history of Man. 5. What may 
be regarded as an approximation to the true Negro type, the most 
striking instance of which we have ever seen, is that of a man by 
the name of Toko, whose likeness is to be found in the Day-Star, 
for 1847. But even this shows a much better formed head, and a 
more intelligent countenance, than belongs to the pure Negro." 255 

In a Benguella skull in the Collection (No. 421), the forehead is 
broad and capacious, the calvarial arch full and regular, the posterior 
region appeal's elongated in consequence of the angle formed by the 
junction of a large Wormian piece and the occiput proper; face regu- 
lar, superior maxillse prognathous. A Mozambique skull (No. 423), 
resembles in form that of the Benguella and Kroos. In another 
Mozambique head (No. 1245), however, the forehead is narrower 
and higher. A cast of a Mozambique skull, recently added to the 
Collection, presents an exceedingly low and degraded form. Three 
Hottentot heads are long, compressed anteriorly ; foreheads low ; the 
whole face small and prognathous, the slope, from the glabella to 
the upper alveolus, being continuous ; the occipital region protube- 
rant. Only one. of these heads approximates the pyramidal form. 
Two Kaffir skulls are characterized by high, peaked foreheads ; the 
sagittal suture marked by a prominent ridge, and the calvaria pyra- 
midal in form. Two Hova skulls have the base long and narrow, 
the vertex flat, the orbits narrow and high, and the superior maxillaj 
prominent. 

The reader will obtain some idea of the different cranial forms of 
Africa, by glancing at the annexed cuts (Figs. 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58), 

255 Op. oit, p. 19. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



331 



taken from the works of Morton, Prichard, and Martin, and 
representing a few of both the higher and lower conformations 
of the skull. 



Fig. 53. 




Fig. 54. 




Kaffir. 



Ashantee. 



Fig. 55. 



Fig. 56. 




Bushman. 



Fig. 57. 





Creole Negro. 



Mummied Negress. 



Passing from Africa to America by the way of the Canary Isles, 
we encounter a peculiar type or form of skull — that of the ancient 
Guanches, who inhabited these Isles before they fell into the posses- 
sion of the Spaniards. The annexed cut (Fig. 59, on next page,) 
shows that this type is neither African nor American, but appertains 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 




GUANCHE. 



rather to the "Caucasian" family, as sug- 
gested by Cuvier, in his observations upon 
the Venus Eottentotte. 256 This opinion is con- 
firmed by a Guanche skull in the Mortonian 
Collection. 

Through Crania Americana, it has long 
been known to the scientific world that a 
remarkable sameness of osteological cha- 
racter pervades all the American tribes 
from Hudson's Bay to Terra del Fuego. It 
is equally well known, that the researches of Humboldt and Gallatin 
have demonstrated a conformity not less remarkable in the language 
and artistic tendencies of these numerous and widely-scattered abo- 
rigines. Dr. Morton divides the American race into two great 
families — the Toltecan, possessing a very ancient demi-civilization, 
and the Barbarous tribes. The latter, he sub-divides into the Appa- 
lachian, Brazilian, Patagonian, and Fuegian branches. The Appa- 
lachians are characterized by a rounded head ; large, salient, and 
aquiline nose ; dark-brown and very slightly oblique eyes ; large 
and straight mouth, with nearly vertical teeth; the whole face 
triangular. The physical traits of the . Brazilian group differ but 
little from those of the Appalachian. A larger and more expanded 
nose, and larger mouths and lips, seem to constitute the only dif- 
ference. Tall statures, fine forms, and indomitable courage distin- 
guish the Patagonian group. The Fuegians bave large heads, broad 
faces, small eyes, clumsy bodies, large chests, and ill-shaped legs. 

As the cranial type or standard representative of these American 
JBarbaroi, I have selected the head of a Cotonay, or Black-foot chief, 

named the "Bloody Hand" (Fig. 60). 
It is from the upper Missouri, and 
was presented by J. J. Audubon, 
Esq. (jSTo. 1227 of the Collection). 
The following extract from the Crania 
Americana will serve to give the rea- 
der a general idea of the cranial pecu- 
liarities of the American type, while 
a comparison with the subjoined fig- 
ures will show how extensively this 
type has been distributed over our 
continent. 

" After examining a great number of skulls, I find that the nations 
east of the Alleghany Mountains, together with the cognate tribes, 



Fig. 60. 




COTONAY. 



266 Memoires du Museum d'Histoire naturelle, t. iii. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 333 

have the head more elongated than any other Americans. This 
remark applies especially to the great Lenape stock, the Iroquois, 
and the Cherokees. To the west of the Mississippi, we again meet 
with the elongated head in the Mandans, Ricaras, Assinaboins, and 
some other tribes. Yet even in these instances, the characteristic 
truncation of the occiput is more or less obvious, while many nations 
east of the Eocky Mountains have the rounded head so characteristic 
of the race, as the Osages, Ottoes, Missouris, Dacotas, and numerous 
others. The same conformation is common in Florida ; but some 
of these nations are evidently of the Toltecan family, as both their 
characters and traditions testify. The head of the Charibs, as well 
of the Antilles as of Terra Firma, are also naturally rounded ; and 
we trace this character, so far as we have had opportunity for exami- 
nation, through the nations east of the Andes, the Patagonians and 
the tribes of Chili. In fact, the flatness of the occipital portion of the 
cranium will probably be found to characterize a greater or less 
number of individuals in every existing tribe, from Terra del Fuego 
to the Canadas. 257 If these skulls be viewed from behind, we observe 
the occipital outline to be moderately curved outwards, wide at the 

257 It is pleasing to observe the unabated energy and zeal which the Professor of History 
and English Literature in University College, Toronto (already, as we have seen, celebrated 
for his archaeological and ethnological researches in Scotland), still bestows upon his 
favorite study, in his new Canadian home. In a recent No. of the Canadian Journal of 
Industry, Science, and Art (November, 1856), of which he is the editorial head, the reader 
will find, from his pen, an interesting account of the Discovery of Indian Remains in Canada 
West. From this article I select the following paragraph, from its bearing upon the sub- 
ject-matter presented in the text above: "No indications," says Prof. W., "have yet been 
noticed of a race in Canada corresponding to the Braehy-cephalic or square-headed mound- 
builders of the Mississippi, although such an approximation to that type undoubtedly 
prevails throughout this continent as, to a considerable extent, to bear out the conclusions 
of Dr. Morton, that a conformity of organization is obvious in the osteological structure 
of the whole American population, extending from the southern Fuegians, to the Indians 
shirting the Arctic Esquimaux. But such an approximation — and it is unquestionably no 
more — still leaves open many important questions relative to the area and race of the 
ancient mound-builders. On our northern shores of the great chain of lakes, crania of the 
more recent braehy-cephalic type have unquestionably been repeatedly found in compara- 
tively modern native graves. Such, however, are the exception, and not the rule. The 
prevailing type, so far as my present experience extends, presents a very marked predomi- 
nance of the longitudinal over the parietal and vertical diameter; while, even in the 
exceptional cases, the braehy-cephalic characteristics fall far short of those so markedly 
distinguishing the ancient crania, the distinctive features of which some observers have 
affirmed them to exhibit. In point of archaeological evidence of ancient occupation, more- 
over, our northern sepulchral disclosures have hitherto revealed little that is calculated to 
add to our definite knowledge of the past, although the traces of ancient metallurgic arts 
suggest the probability of such evidence being found. The discovery of distinct proofs 
of the ancient extension of the race of the mound-builders into these northern and eastern 
regions, would furnish an addition of no slight importance to our materials for the primeval 
history of the Great Lake districts embracing Canada West." 



334 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

occipital protuberances, and full from those points to the opening 
of the ear. From the parietal protuberances there is a slightly 
curved slope to the vertex, producing a conical, or rather a wedge- 
shaped outline. Humboldt has remarked, that ' there is no race on 
the globe in which the frontal bone is so much pressed backwards, 
and in which the forehead is so small.' ^ It must be observed, how- 
ever, that the lowness of the forehead is in some measure compen- 
sated by its breadth, which is generally considerable. The flat 
forehead was esteemed beautiful among a vast number of tribes ; 
and this fancy has been the principal incentive to the moulding 
of the head by art. Although the orbital cavities are large, the 
eyes themselves are smaller than in Europeans ; and Fresier asserts 
that the Puelche women he saw in Chili were absolutely hideous from 
the smallness of their eyes. The latter are also deeply set or sunk 
in the head ; an appearance which is much increased by the low and 

prominent frontal ridges "What has been said of the bony 

orbits obtains with surprising uniformity ; thus the superior margin 
is but slightly curved, while the inferior may be compared to an 
inverted arch. The lateral margins form curves rather mediate 
between the other two. This fact is the more interesting on account 
of the contrast it presents to the oblong orbit and parallel margins 
observable in the Malay. The latter conformation, however, is 
sometimes seen in the American, but chiefly in those skulls which 
have been altered by pressure to the frontal bone. — The nose con- 
stitutes one of the strongest and most uniform features of the Indian 
countenance ; it mostly presents the decidedly arched form, without 
being strictly aquiline, and still more rarely flat. -»- The nasal cavities 
correspond to the size of the nose itself; and 
the remarkable acuteness of smell possessed by 
the American Indian has been attributed to the 
great expansion of the olfactory membrane. 
But the perfection of this sense, like that of 
hearing among the same people, is perhaps 
chiefly to be attributed to its constant and as- 
siduous cultivation. The cheek-bones are large 
and prominent, and incline rapidly towards the 
lower jaw, giving the face an angular conforma- 
tion. The upper jaw is often elongated, and 

Head of the famous Sao much inclined outwards, but the teeth are for 

chief, "Black Hawk." , . __. n . , , 

the most part vertical. The lower jaw is broad 

and ponderous, and truncated in front. The teeth are also very 

large, and seldom decayed ; for among the many that remain in the 

skulls in my possession, very few present any marks of disease, 

2M Monuments, t. I., p. 158. 




OF THE RACES OF MEN". 335 

although they are often much worn down by attrition in the masti- 
cation of hard substances." 

The Peruvian skull " is remarkable for its small size, and also, 
as just observed, for its quadrangular form. The occiput is greatly 
compressed, sometimes absolutely vertical ; the sides are swelled 
out, and the forehead is somewhat elevated, but very retreating. 
The capacity of the cavity of the cranium, derived from the measure- 
ment of many specimens of the pure Inca race, shows a singularly 
small cerebral mass for an intelligent and civilized people. These 
heads are remarkable not only for their smallness, but also for their 
irregularity ; for in the whole series in my possession, there is but 
one that can be called symmetrical. This irregularity chiefly con- 
sists in the greater projection of the occiput to one side than the 
other, showing in some instances a surprising degree of deformity. 
As this condition is as often observed on one side as the other, it is 
not to be attributed to the intentional application of mechanical 
force ; on the contrary, it is to a certain degree common to the whole 
American race, and is sometimes no doubt increased by the manner 
in which the child is placed in the cradle." 

From the preceding paragraph, it will be seen that Dr. Morton 
considered the asymmetry of the Peruvian head to be congenital. 
In a subsequent essay he concluded that this deformity was the 
result of pressure artificially applied. 259 According to Rivero and 
Tschudi, this deformity can be demonstrated upon the mummied 
foetus. It must, therefore, be regarded as the natural form of a 
primeval race. This opinion is confirmed by the following extract 
from a letter of Dr. Lund, of Copenhagen, addressed to the His- 
torical and Geographical Society of Brazil, concerning some organic 
remains discovered in the calcareous rocks in the Province of Minas 
Geraes, Brazil. 

"We know," says he, "that the human figures found sculptured in the ancient monu- 
ments of Mexico represent, for the greater part, a singular conformation of head, — being 
entirely without forehead — the cranium retreating backwards immediately above the super- 
ciliary arch. This anomaly, which is generally attributed to an artificial disfiguration of the 
head, or the taste of the artist, now admits a more natural explanation ; it being now proved, 
by these authentic documents, that there really existed on this continent a race exhibiting 
this anomalous conformation." 260 

Many curious facts might be mentioned in this connection, show- 
ing that not a few of the artificial deformations of the head witnessed 
in certain races of men, are in reality imitations of once natural types. 

"We know," says Amedee Thieert, "that the Huns used artificial means for giving 
Mongolian physiognomy to their children; they flattened the nose with firmly-strained 

259 Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines. Silliman's Journal, 
November, 1846. 

260 This letter was translated by Lieut. Strain, U. S. N, and a synopsis of it published in 
the Proceedings of the Philada. Acad. Nat. Sciences, February, 1844. 



oob THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

linen ribbons, and pressed the head to make the cheek-bones projecting. What could be 
the reasonable cause of this barbarous custom, if not the effort to approach a form, -which, 
among the Huns, was held in greater regard — in a word, the aristocratic race? The pur- 
pose quoted by the Roman authors, to get the helmet better fixed on the head, is scarcely 
credible. It seems more probable, that when the Mongols were masters of the Huns, the 
Mongolian physiognomy was the prize attached to aristocratic distinctions; they conse- 
quently tried to approach this form, and considered it an honor thus to deform themselves, 
in order to resemble the reigning nation. This is most likely the cause of those unnatural 
deformations which historical writers so particularly describe." 261 

This opinion is also entertained by Profs. Hetzitjs 262 and Esch- 
richt. 263 Zeune thus expresses his views upon this interesting 
subject: 

"Though some naturalists presume that the flatness of the Huanca skull and the height 
of the Natchez skull are produced by artificial pressure when young, yet Camper contends 
against this idea, on page 37 of his 'Natural Difference in Faces,' translated by Sommerino, 
as does also Catlin in his 'North American Indians,' and I am of the opinion that if there 
did not already exist a disposition to these forms in nature, the different nations could 
never have conceived the idea of carrying it to extremes." 

The following extract from a letter addressed to Dr. J. H. B. McClel- 
lan, by Mr. George Gibbs, Indian Agent, dated Fort Vancouver, Ore- 
gon, December 17, 1855, will be read with interest in this connection : 

" Let me point out to you one thing to be noted as regards skulls from this part of the 
country, which was brought to my notice by an article in Schoolcraft's book. I forget by 
whom. Among ten figures given, are Chinook skulls unflattened. Skulls from the region 
where that practice prevails, which are in the natural state, are those of slaves, and though 
possibly born among the Chinooks, or other adjacent tribes, are of alien races. The cha- 
racteristics must not be assumed therefore from these. The practice prevails, generally, 
from the mouth of the Columbia to the Dalles, about 180 miles, and from the Straits of 
Fuca on the north to Coos Bay, between the 42d and 43d parallel south. Northward of the 
Straits it diminishes gradually to a mere slight compression, finally confined to women, and 
abandoned entirely north of Milbank Sound. So east of the Cascade Mountains, it dies out 
in like manner. Slaves are usually brought from the south — I should rather say were, for 
the foreign slave trade has ceased, though not the domestic (I am not talking of home poli- 
tics) — and the Klamath and Shaste tribes of California probably furnished many for this 
country, while captives from here were taken still north, and from Puget's Sound as far as 
the Russian possessions. The children of slaves were not allowed to flatten the skull, and 
therefore these round heads indicate, not the liberty-loving Puritan of the west, but the 
serf. I mention this, because in minute comparisons it is proper to take all precautions to 
insure genuineness. Skulls taken from large cemeteries, or from sepulchres of whatever 
form erected with care, may be deemed authentic, saving always the chance of intermar- 
riage with distinct tribes, which is usual, because the bodies of slaves are left neglected in 
the woods ; the Chinooks, for instance, preferring to buy wives from the Chihalis or Cowlitz, 
tribes of Sehlish origin. If I get time to finish my general report this winter, you will find 

261 Quoted by Prof. Retzius from Burckhardt's German translation of Thierry's work, 
"Attila Schilderungen aus der Geschichte des fiinften Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1852." See a 
paper "On artificially formed Skulls from the Ancient World," by Prof. Retzius, in Pro- 
ceedings of Philada. Acad. Nat. Sciences, for September, 1855. 

262 Phrenologien bedomd fran en Anatomisk standpunkt. Af Prof. A Retzius. 

263 Angaaende Betydningen af Hjerneskallens og hele Hovedets Formforskjellighed. 
(Skand. Naturf. S'allsk. Fordhandl.) 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



33/ 



further details, supposing always you are not tired of these. I have never been able to get 
an authenticated skull of a -white half-breed. These also are never flattened, the pride 
of intercourse in the mother preserving to the child the attributes of the superior race." 2Si 

Figs. 62, 63, 64, and 65, following, represent, respectively, the 
head of a Creek chief, in the possession of Dr. ISTott, of Mobile ; the 
skull of a Sioux or Dacota warrior (No. 605) ; the skull of a Seminole 



Fig. 62. 



Fig. 63. 




Seminole Waekiok. 
Fig. 66. 





Dacota Warrior. 



Fig. 65. 




Ancient Mound-builder. 
Fig. 67. 




Peruvians. 



S6 * See Proceedings of Philada. Acad. Nat. Sciences, March, 1856. 

22 



338 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

warrior, slain at the battle of St. Josephs, in June, 1836 (No. 604) ; 
and the cranium of an ancient mound-builder (ISTo. 1512), " found by 
Dr. Davis and Mr. Squier, in a mound in the Scioto Valley, Ohio, 
and described and figured by them in their Ancient Monuments of the 
Mississippi Valley, PI. XL VII. and XL VIII. 

The general form of the Peruvian skull is shown in Figs. 66 
and 67 (retro). 

The cranial types of Oceanica still remain to be discussed. With 
my limits already overswelled, I can but allude in the briefest man- 
ner to a few of the more important and striking skull-forms of this 
vast region, which has been anthropologically divided by Jacqui- 
jf OT 26o j n ^ three great sections, viz. : 1. Australia, comprehending 
New Holland and Tasmania, or Van Diemen's Land ; 2. Polynesia, 
embracing Micronesia and Melanesia, or, in other words, the islands 
of the Pacific Ocean, from the west coast of America to the Philip- 
pines and the Moluccas ; and 3. Malaysia, comprising the Sunda, 
Philippine, and Molucca islands — the East Indies, or Indian Archi- 
pelago of the geographer. 

According to Prichard, the numerous types of this immense 
region differ decidedly from each other, and also from those of the 
old and new world. Jacquinot, however, affirms that the Polyne- 
sians do not differ sensibly from the American tribes. 2116 Blanchard 
also speaks of" une grand analogie entre les peuples de la Polynesie 
et ceux de l'Amerique." 267 The correctness of this opinion Dr. Nott 
positively denies, resting his negation upon a comparison of the skulls 
of the two races. 268 Blumenbach, Desmoulins, and Pickering assure 
us that the Polynesians belong to the Malay stock. Such an affilia- 
tion Crawfurd clearly disproves. 

Jacquinot thus characterizes the Polynesian race : " Skin tawny, 
of a yellow color washed with bistre, more or less deep ; very light 
in some, almost brown in others. Hair black, bushy, smooth, and 
sometimes frizzled. Eyes black, more split than open, not at all 
oblique. Nose long, straight, sometimes aquiline or straight; nos- 
trils large and open, which makes it sometimes look flat, especially 
in women and children ; in them, also, the lips, which in general 
are long and curved, are slightly prominent. Teeth fine, incisors 

283 Voyage au Pole Sud, Zoologie, t. 2. Observations sur les Races Huinaines de PAinenque 
Meridionale et de l'Oc^anie. 

a* Op. cit. 

w Voyage au Pole Sud, Anthropologic ; Texte, p. 68. In the same paragraph, however, 
he says, "Nous pensons qu'il existe entre eux des caracteres distinctifs, des caracteres 
appr^ciables dans la forme du crane." 

268 Types of Mankind, p. 438. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



339 



Fig. 68. 



large. Cheek-bones large, not salient ; enlarging tlie face, which, 
nevertheless, is longer than wide." 

This description is confirmed by most of the travellers who have 
visited the region tinder consideration. " All voyagers, however," 
says Morton, " have noticed the great disparity that exists between 
the plebeians and the aristocratic class, as respects stature, features, 
and complexion. The privileged order is much fairer and much 
taller than the other ; their heads are better developed, and their 
profile shows more regular features, including the arched and aquiline 
nose." 269 

A slight examination of the skulls in the Mortonian Collection 
representing this race, is sufficient to show, that while a general 
resemblance of cranial forms prevails throughout this region, yet 
considerable variations in type can be readily pointed out. A 
glance at the beautiful plates of Dumoutier's " Atlas" serves to 
confirm this conclusion. 

The head of a Kanaka, of the Sandwich Islands, — a race of people 
" the most docile and imitative, and 
perhaps also the most easy of in- 
struction, of all the Polynesians" — 
appears to me to afford a good idea 
of the general cranial type of Poly- 
nesia. The head (Fig. 68) is elon- 
gated; the forehead recedent; the 
face long and oval; the breadth 
between the orbits considerable; 
the alveolar margin of the supe- 
rior maxillary slightly prominent; 
the lower jaw large and regularly 
rounded. The breadth and shortness of the base and the peculiar 
flatness of the sub-occipital region give to the whole head an elon- 
gated or drawn-out appearance. 

This peculiarity of the basi-occipital portion of the head is still 
better shown in Figs. 69 and 70, on next page, which represent the 
cranium of a Sandwich Islander, who died in the Marine Hospital at 
Mobile, while under the care of Drs. Levert and Mastin. " This 
skull," says Dr. Nott, "was presented to Agassiz and myself for 
examination, without being apprised of its history. Notwithstand- 
ing there was something in its form which appeared unnatural, yet 
it resembled, more than any other race, the Polynesian; and as such 
we did not hesitate to class it. It turned out afterwards that we 
were right ; and that our embarrassment had been produced by an 




Sandwich Islander. 



208 Crania Americana, p. 59. 



340 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Fig. 69. Fig. 70. 





Sandwich Islander. 



Vertical View of Same. 



artificial flattening of the occiput; which process the Islander, 
while at the hospital, had told Drs. Levert and Mastin, was 
habitual in his family. The profile view betrays less protube- 
rance of brain behind, and the vertical view more compression 
of occiput, than belongs generally to his race ; but still there 
remains enough of cranial characteristics to mark his Polynesian 
origin ; even were not the man's history preserved, to attest the 
gross depravity of his animal propensities." 

Fj 71 Fig. 71, reduced from Plate 32 of Du- 

moutier's Atlas, represents the head of a 
native of Mawi, one of the small islands 
of the Sandwich group. This head appears 
to me to possess a somewhat higher de- 
velopment than is seen in the two pre- 
ceding figures. 

The skull of a cannibal, in the Mortonian 
Collection (No. 1531), from Christina Island 
— one of the Marquesas — exhibits a nar- 
row, dolicho-cephalic form; the frontal re- 
gion flat and narrow ; tbe posterior region broad and ponderous ; 
the face massive and roughly marked ; the superior maxilla more 
everted than in the Sandwich Islander ; altogether a low and brutal 

form, though the internal capacity is as 
high as 90.5 cubic inches. This head re- 
sembles in several respects the skull of a 
man of the Tais tribe (ISTukahiva), figured 
by Dumoutier on his 29th Plate. It differs 
from the latter in having a somewhat re- 
tracted lower jaw ; a feature which approxi- 
mates it to the Malay head figured below. 
Fig. 72 repi'esents one of a collection o'f 
Nukahivan. crania brought by Dumoutier from the 




Sandwich Islander. 



Fig. 72. 




OF THE EACES OF MEN. 341 

ancient ossuaries in the Island of ISTukahiva. Blanchakd has care- 
fully studied this collection, and also a series of Marquesau crania 
in the " Galerie Anthropologique du Museum d'Histoire JSaturelle." 
He informs us that — 

" Comparativement aux cranes des Europeens, ceux des naturels des lies Marquises se 
montrent beaucoup plus retrecis et plus arrondis vers le sommet. Le frontal fait non- 
seulement en arriere, mais aussi sur les cote's. Cet os est ainsi arrondi et n'offre en aucune 
facon ce m^plat general qu'on observe ordinairement dans les tetes des Europeens, avec des 
nuances a, la verite tres-notables. 

"En mesurant la hauteur du crane des Noukahiviens du bord inferieur du maxillaire 
supe"rieur a Tangle de la derniere molaire ou depuis l'apophyse mastoi'dienne jusqu'au bord 
median du coronal a son insertion avec les parietaux. et comparant cette mesure avec celle 
de l'epaisseur du crane prise de la partie la plus avancee du frontal a l'origine de l'occi- 
pital, nous avons trouve chez plusieurs sujets que cette hauteur etait a peine inferieure 
a l'epaisseur. Chez un pins grand nombre cependant, nous avons trouve la largeur du 
crane, consider par le cote, d'environ un huitieme superieure a la hauteur, et m§me un 
peu plus, chez deux ou trois individus. De ce cote" il y a done des differences individuelle's 
assez prononc^es. 

" Le coronal dans sa plus grande largeur, prise d'une suture a l'autre, s'est montre d'une 
etendue sensiblement moindre avec de trfes-iegeres variations, que la hauteur prise de l'ori- 
gine des os nasaux a, la suture mediane des parietaux. Un crane de femme seul nous a 
fourni ces deux mesures £gales. 

" La distance de l'apophyse mastoi'dienne ^ l'extre'mite' de la machoire superieure s'est 
trouve"e, chez tous les cranes de Kanaques, egale a l'espace compris entre le bord externa 
des deux os jugaux pris a leur insertion avec l'os frontal. 

" Dans ce type enfin on constate encore une preeminence bien prononcfe des apophyses 
zygomatiques une forte saillie des os maxillaires et une forme ovalaire dans la base du 
crane, l'occipital etant sensiblement att^nue en arriere. 

" Les tetes de femmes pr&entent les memes caracteres que les tetes d'hommes, les 
memes rapports entre les proportions de la boite cranienne, de l'os frontal, etc., avec les os 
de la face un peu moins saillants." 

In Fig. 73 (skull of a Taitian woman), Fig. 73. 

the reader has before him the cranial type 
of the Society Islands. 

"Nous remarquons," says' Blanchakd, "la menie 
forme ge'ne'rale de la tete que chez les naturels des 
iles Marquises ; e'est e"galement une forme pyramidale, 
plus prononce'e encore que nous ne l'avons vu partout 
ailleurs dans la t6te d'homme qui porte sur la planche 
les nuine"ros 1 et 2 ; mais ici l'allongement general de 
cette tete nous fait croire a, une particularity tout a fait 
individuelle. Memes rapports entre la hauteur et la Taitian. 

longueur du crane que chez les Kanaques, et cependant, 

vue par le profil, la tete nous parait plus arrondie chez les Tai'tiens, les parie'taux nous 
semblent moins de'prime's en arriere. Sous le rapport des proportions de l'os frontal, 
comme chez les precedents, nous avons constate un peu moins de largeur que de hauteur. 
La saillie des os maxillaires nous parait aussi plus prononcee chez le Taitien que chez le 
Noukahivien. Ceci est tres-marque dans la tete de femme portant sur la planche XXX les 
numeros 3 et 4. Si l'on mesure la longueur comprise enti'e l'apophyse mastoi'dienne et 
l'extremite du maxillaire supfirieur, on verra, en portant cette mesure sur l'espace compris 




THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



Fig. 74. 




Tonga Islander. 



entre les os jugaux & leur insertion, qu'elle est manifestement superieure a celle que nous 
avoDS reconnue sur de nombreux cranes de naturels des lies Marquises. Cette difference 
est aussi tres-sensible dans le crane d'enfant qui, sur la memo planche, porte les numeros 
5 et 6." 

Dumoutier figures, in his beautiful Atlas, several crania from 
Tongataboo and Vavao, of which I select one (Fig. 74), that of 
a Tonga Islander, to represent the skull- 
type of the Friendly Islands. According 
to Blanchard, these crania resemble, in 
their general form or type, those of the 
Mangareviens, Taitians, and other Polyne- 
sians. He assures us that the proportions 
of the calvaria, the prominence of the zygo- 
matic arches, and the maxillary bones, ap- 
pear to be the same in all. Viewed in front, 
the head of the Tongans partakes of the 
pyramidal form more decidedly than the 
skulls of the other Polynesians. The coro- 
nal region is also a little longer. 

"Si le caractere," says Rlanchard, "observe' ici sur quelques individus appartient a la 
plus grande masse des habitants de l'archipel des Amis, il deviendra Evident qu'il existe 
un caractere anthropologique pour distinguer les Tongans de leurs Toisins de Test, et que 
ce caractere traduit une superiority relative d'intelligence." 

A higher form of the skull than the Tongan, is seen in Fig. 75, 

which represents the head of a Feejee 
Islander, in the Collection of the Royal 
College of Surgeons, London. It is 
thus described by Martin : 

" The forehead is small, and laterally compressed, 
the space occupied by the temporal muscle being 
quite flat ; but the centre of each parietal bone is 
boldly and abruptly convex ; the top of the head, 
or coronal arch, is ridge-like, with a slope down- 
ward on each side ; the cheek-bones are large and 
deep ; the upper margin of the orbits is smooth ; 
and the frontal sinuses are but slightly indicated ; 
the orbits are large, and rather circular ; the nasal 
bones are short and depressed, and the nasal ori- 
fice is of remarkable width and extent, as is that 
of the posterior nares also; the alveolar ridge of the superior maxillary bone projects 
moderately ; the lower jaw is very thick and deep ; the posterior angle is rounded, and the 
base of the ramus arched, so that the posterior angle and the chin do not touch a plane ; 
the basilar process of the occipital bone is less inclined upward than in five or six European 
skulls examined at the same time : the coronal suture only impinges on the sphenoid bone 
by a quarter of an inch. From the middle of the occipital condyle to the alveolar ridge 
between the two middle incisors, the measurement is four inches and three-eighths ; the 
posterior development of the cranium, beyond the middle of the condyle, three inches and 
three-eighths." 



Fig. 75. 




Feejee Islander. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 



34J 




Malicolo. 



Fig. 76 represents the head of a native of Mali- Fi s- 76 - 

oolo, one of the ISTew Hebrides. 

As we journey westward toward Australia, we 
find the human cranial type changing again in 
the inhabitants of the Vitian Archipelago. A 
glance at the figures on plate 33 of Dumotjtier's 
Atlas, shows at once that the Vitian skulls differ 
to some extent from those of the other Polynesian 
races already noticed. The cranium of the former 
is more elongated posteriorly, and the maxillary 
bones are more salient ; the forehead is lower and 
more recedent, so that, viewed in front, the head has less of the pyra- 
midal form. Blanchard has pointed out considerable differences in 
the dimensions of the Vitian, as compared with the other Polynesian 
skulls. He also compares together African and Polynesian crania, 
and observes that if these two great groups resemble each other in 
certain characters, they differ not the less remarkably in others. 

It is obviously impossible for me, in this place, to give an elaborate 
description of the various skull-forms of the Polynesian realm. Such 
a description, in the hands of Blanchard, has already grown into an 
octavo volume of nearly three hundred pages. Let it suffice, there- 
fore, to say, that the traveller, as he visits in succession the numerous 
groups of islands composing the Polynesian realm, is constantly con- 
fronted with interesting and instructive modifications of the funda- 
mental type of this realm. 

The Malay conformation next claims our attention. From the 
heads of this race in the Mortonian 
Collection, I select ~No. 47, as the 
representative of this widely-diffused 
and peculiar type. 

"The skull of the Malay" (Fig. 77), says 
Mobton, "presents the following characters: 
the forehead is low, moderately prominent, and 
arched ; the occiput is much compressed, and 
often projecting at its upper and lateral parts; 
the orbits are oblique, oblong, and remarkably 
quadrangular, the upper and lower margins 
being almost straight and parallel ; the nasal 
bones are broad and flattened, or even concave ; 

the cheek-bones are high and expanded ; the jaws are greatly projected ; and the upper jaw, 
together with the teeth, is much inclined outwards, and often nearly horizontal. The teeth 
are by nature remarkably fine, but are almost uniformly filed away in front, to enable them 
to imbibe the color of the betel-nut, which renders them black and unsightly. — The facial 
angle is less than in the Mongol and Chinese ; for the average, derived from a measurement 
of thirteen perfect skulls in my possession, gives about seventy-three degrees." 2, ° 



Fig. 77. 




Malay. 



2,0 Crania Americana, p. 56. 



344 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



The exceedingly low and degraded Australian type is shown in 
the following engravings. Fig. 78 (No. 1327 of the Collection) repre- 
sents the skull of a native of Port St. Philip, New South Wales. 
"This skull," says Moeton, "is the nearest approach to the orang 
type that I have seen." It is a truly animal head. The forehead is 
exceedingly flat and recedent, while the prognathism of the superior 
maxillary almost degenerates into a muzzle. The alveolar arch, 



Fig. 78. 



Fig. 79. 





Australian of Poet St. Philip. 



Australian. 



Fig. 80. 



Fig. 81. 





New Hollander. 



Native of Timor. 



instead of being round or oval in outline, is nearly square. The whole 
head is elongated and depressed along the coronal region, the basis 
cranii flat, and the mastoid processes very large and roughly formed. 
The immense orbits are overhung by ponderous superciliary ridges. 
This latter feature is still more evident in No. 1451 of the Collection, 
which, though varying somewhat in type, presents in general the same 
brutal appearance. Fig.79, from Pbichaed's "Researches," represents 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 345 

the skull of an Australian savage, which is in the museum of the Col- 
lege of Surgeons. It somewhat resemhles Fig. 54 in its general form. 
The longitudinal ridge running from the forehead to the occiput, which 
is frequently ohserved in Australian skulls, is conspicuous in this. 
The ridge formed by the frontal sinuses is likewise prominent, and 
there is a deep notch over the nasal processes of the frontal bone. 
These characters are very strongly marked in the skulls of the 
Oceanic nations, as in those of the New Zealanders and Taitians. 271 
Figs. 80 and 81 — from Dumoutier's "Atlas" — represent respectively 
a native of Bate Raffle, on the coast of New Holland, and a native of 
Amnoubang, in the Isle of Timor. 

According to Capt. Wilees, the " cast of the (Australian) face is 
between the African and the Malay ; the forehead unusually nar- 
row and high ; the eyes small, black, and deep-set ; the nose much 
depressed at the upper part, between the eyes, and widened at the 
base, which is done in infancy by the mother, the natural shape 
being of an aquiline form ; the cheek-bones are high, the mouth 
large, and furnished with strong, well-set teeth ; the chin frequently 
retreats ; the neck is thin and short." 

" The general characters of the Australian skull," writes Martin, 
"consist in their narrowness, or lateral compression, and in the 
ridge-like form of the coronal arch ; the sides of which, however, 
are less roof-like, or flattened, than those of the Tasmanian skull. . . . 
The superciliary ridge projects greatly, giving a scowling expression 
to the orbits, and reminding us of some of the larger Apes ; the nasal 
bones, which are exceedingly short and depressed, sink abruptly, 
forming a notch at their union with the frontal bone, which projects 
over them; the forehead is low and retreating; and the external 
orbitary process of the temporal bone is very bold and projecting, 
while the space occupied by the temporal muscle is strongly marked ; 
the orbits are irregularly quadrate ; the cheek-bones are prominent ; 
the face is flat, and seems as if crushed below the frontal bone ; the 
external nasal orifice, and that of the posterior nares, are very ample ; 
the coronal suture terminates as in the skull of the Feejee Islander; 
the lower jaw is more acute at its angle than in the skull just alluded 
to, but it is arched upward at the chin." 272 

In conclusion, I place before the reader six figures, representing 
Tasmanian, New-Guinean, and Alforian skulls. They are takeu 
from the works of Du Perry, Prichard, Martin, and Dumoutier, 
and are introduced here, not only to complete our survey of cranial 

2 » Op. cit., Vol. I., p. 299. » 2 Man and Monkeys, p. 312. 



346 



THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 



forms, but also to exhibit a few of those inferior types through which 
the human family, in obedience to a grand and deeply underlying 
law of organic unity, seeks to connect itself with the great animal 
series of which it is the undoubted head and front. 



Fig. 82. 



Fig. 83. 




Tasmanian, from Western Coast of 
Van Diemen's Land. (Royal Col- 
lege of Surgeons, London.) 



Fig. 84. 





Tasmanian (Dumoutier's Atlas). 



Fig. 85. 




Tasmanian (Prichard's Researches). 



Tasmanian (Dumoutier's Atlas). 



Fig. 87. 



Fig. 86. 




New Guinean (Dumoutier's Atlas). 




Alfourou-Endamene (Martin's 
Man and Monkeys). 



OF THE RACES OF MEN". 347 

Here our rapid panoramic survey of the diversified cranial charac- 
teristics of the human family must terminate. In this survey, having 
no theory to establish or defend, I have carefully and impartially pre- 
sented the facts as I have found them, for the most part, indelibly 
traced upon the specimens in the vast Mortonian Collection. Nor 
have I depended upon this Collection alone, as will appear from the 
frequent references to and quotations from the more important of the 
numerous works which constitute the literature of my subject. This 
method has been adopted, as affording the best idea of the past his- 
tory, progress, and present condition of craniographic research, and 
its claims to be considered as one of the natural sciences. By such 
a procedure, moreover, the reader has gradually become acquainted, 
as it were, with the zealous and indefatigable workers in this field, 
whose names are intimately associated with many of the facts dis- 
cussed in this essay. Feelings of professional pride prompt me, 
in this place, to refer particularly to two of these laborers, who, with 
careful hands, have materially assisted in building an Ethnologic 
edifice, whose fair proportions will yet delight and astonish the 
world. The researches of Pkichaed and Mokton constitute right 
noble columns guarding the entrance into this edifice. Recog- 
nizing, at an early period of their professional career, the scientific 
claims of medicine — claims seldom perceived by the mass — their 
expansive minds led them steadily onward, beyond the crowded 
middle-walks of their calling. Both were physicians, in the primi- 
tive sense of the word — medical naturalists, whose broad and com- 
prehensive views shed a lustre over the healing art. There is a 
singular propriety in thus coupling the labors and lives of these 
two philosophers. Their patient, unresting industry and strong 
determinative will enabled them to prove conclusively to the world, 
as indeed Hunter and others had already done, that, to a consider- 
able extent, scientific investigation is not only compatible with the 
active daily duties of the physician, but in reality, by inculcating 
close and accurate habits of observation, very often becomes a 
guarantee of success in the performance of those duties. As con- 
firmatory of this, hear what their respective biographers have said 
of them: "Dr. Prichard applied himself," says Dr. Hodgkin, "with 
as much zeal to the practice, as he had done to the study of his 
profession. He established a dispensary. He became physician 
to some of the principal medical institutions of Bristol. Me had not 
only a large practice in his oivn neighborhood, hut was often called to 
distant consultations. Notwithstanding the engrossing nature of 
these occupations, he found time to prepare and deliver lectures 



348 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

on Physiology and Medicine, and wrote an essay on Fever, and one 
on Epilepsy, and subsequently a larger work on Nervous Diseases." 273 
All this, it will be recollected, in addition to his laborious Researches 
into the Physical History of Mankind, upon which is based his fame 
as an Ethnologist. Of Dr. Morton, Prof. Chas. D. Meigs thus writes: 
" His medical practice was increasing up to the time of his death. He 
had the good sense and prudence to maintain his active and visible 
connection with his profession, while striving in the race for fame as 
a philosopher. He had early begun to make his now celebrated 
collection of crania, with great labor and toil, and inconvenient cost. 
He investigated organic remains : he explained problems in zoologj* 
and ethnology ; he diligently attended the sick ; he published valuable 
treatises on consumption, on the science of anatomy, and on the 
practice of physic. He served the city gratuitously, as physician to 
the Almshouse Hospital, and delivered courses of lectures at the 
Pennsylvania Medical College, where he was Professor of Anatomy. 
All these things were done by a man whose family was large, and 
chargeable upon his funds, derivable in chief from his exertions as 
a physician." 27 * Such were the manifold and onerous duties amidst 
which Dr. Morton composed and published his two brilliant cranio- 
logical works, and numerous detached papers on ethnography, hy- 
bridity, and allied subjects. 

Though the lives of these two men present several interesting 
parallels, and though their labors were steadily directed towards 
the same great object, yet they sought that object through different 
channels of research. With laborious hands, Prichard gathered 
from the records of travel, and from numerous philological and 
archaeological works in various languages, an immense mass of 
material, which he carefully and learnedly digested. With equal 
industry and perseverance, Morton gathered from the receptacles 
of the dead, all over the world, those bony records which he studied 
with such untiring zeal and discrimination. Prichard, the erudite 
scholar, gave to the natural history of man a philosophico-literary cha- 
racter; Morton, the philosophical naturalist, stamped it with the seal 
of the natural sciences. To the ethnological student, the published la- 
bors of these savants will long continue a shining and a guiding light ; 
while the world at large cannot fail to find, in the history of theii 
lives, noble lessons of the power of ceaseless and indefatigable labor. 

Aware of the extreme caution necessary in arriving at conclusions 
in so grave a study as that which has just occupied our attention 
through so many pages, and knowing that every erroneous inference 
must either directly or indirectly retard the advancement of Ethno- 

2 » 3 Biographical Sketch, &c, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Vol. XLVII. p. 205. 
2 ' 4 Memoir, &c, read before Philada. Acad. Nat. Sciences, November 6, 1851. 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 349 

graphy, I have preferred, occasionally, to suggest what appeared to 
rae a legitimate induction, rather than to pronounce positively and 
authoritatively upon the facts presented. In the same cautious man- 
ner, the following propositions are placed before the reader, as more 
or less clearly derivable from the foregoing facts and arguments. 

1. That cranial characters constitute an enduring, natural, and 
therefore strictly reliable basis upon which to establish a true classi- 
fication of the races of men. 

2. That the value of such characters is determined by their con- 
stancy, rather than by their magnitude. 

3. That these characters constitute, in the aggregate, typical forms 
of crania. 

4. That historical and monumental records, and the remains found in 
ossuaries, mounds, &c, indicate a remarkable persistence of these forms. 

5. That this persistence through time, as viewed from a zoological 
stand-point, renders it difficult, if indeed possible, to assign to the 
leading cranial types any other than specific values. 

6. That, in the present state of our knowledge, however, we are 
by no means certain that such types were primitively distinct. 275 The 
historical period is too short to determine the question of original 
unity or diversity of cranial forms. Moreover, this question loses its 
importance in the presence of a still higher one — the original unity 
or diversity of all organic forms. 

7. That diversity of cranial types does not necessarily imply diversity 
of origin. Neither do strong resemblances between such types infal- 
libly indicate a common parentage. Such resemblances merely express 
similarity of position in the human series. 276 

27a " Those who have studied the natural history of man," says Prof. Draper, in his 
recent admirable work on the 'Conditions and Course of the Life of Man,' "have occupied 
themselves too completely with the idea of fixity in the aspect of human families, and have 
treated of them as though they were perfectly and definitely distinct, or in a condition 
of equilibrium. They have described them as they are found in the various countries of the 
globe, and since these descriptions remain correct during a long time, the general inference 
of an invariability has gathered strength, until some writers are to be found who suppose 
that there have been as many separate creations of man as there are races which can be 
distinguished from each other. We are perpetually mistaking the slow movements of 
Nature for absolute rest. We compound temporary equilibration with final equilibrium." 

This paragraph I find in Chapter VII., which is as singularly unhappy in its craniological 
conclusions, as the leading idea of the work, though not novel, is grand and philosophical. 
If the above language of Dr. D. is meant to be applied to geological periods of time, it is 
probably correct ; if it extends not beyond the historical epoch, it is without the support 
of facts. 

276 " S'il n'y a qu'une seule race muable," writes J. E. Cornat (de Kochefort), " c'est-a- 
dire pouvant avoir des vari6te"s, il n'y a eu a la genese primitive qu'un seul pere et qu'une 
seule mere (Tune meme espece. S'il y a plusieurs races immuiables. il y a eu a la genese 
primitive plusieurs especes de peres et rle mires. Toute la question est done renferme'e dans 
la mutabilile ou dans I'immutabilite des races, pour arriver a la connaissance du nombre des 



350 THE CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

8. That each well-marked cranial type admits of certain variations 
in its individual characters, which variations constitute divergent 
forms. 

9. That these divergent forms must not he confounded with hybrid 
types. Both, it is true, are produced by modifications in the mode 
of action of the developing principle ; in the former, however, these 
modifications depend upon climatic conditions, in the latter they 
result from race-amalgamation. 

10. That reasons exist for considering some, at least, of the so- 
called artificial deformations as strictly natural types, representing 
very early humanitarian epochs. 

11. That a regular system of gradation seems to underlie and har- 
monize the various cranial forms of the human family. 

12. That these forms appear to he pre-represented or anticipated 
in the various types of skull exhibited by different genera and species 
of monkeys. 

13. That if we regard artificial deformations as the forced imita- 
tions of once natural types, and upon this ground admit them in our 
systems of classification, as some writers have done, then the per- 
plexing gaps which seem to break the animal chain by disparting 
man and monkeys — the group which stands nearest to man — will 
to a certain extent be filled intelligibly. 

espeees primitives." [Elements de Morphologic Humaine, 2de partie, p. 116; Paris, 1850.) 
The general immobility of race-characters and specific forms is pretty well determined for 
the historic period. But in this period a remarkable equilibrium of physical conditions 
has been maintained. In the ante-historic epoch, the question of the mobility or immo- 
bility of cranial, in common with all organic forms, must be studied over a wider time- 
latitude, and nnder altered physical circumstances. If now we recall the great physio- 
logical fact, that under the influence of the vital principle, organic matter assumes a 
definite, though infinitely diversified form (the organic cell and its developmental modi- 
fications), and that this form constitutes the medium through which all the active pheno- 
mena of life are manifested, and if we, furthermore, reflect upon the mass of evidence 
which strongly tends to correlate, if not, indeed, to identify the vital with the physical 
forces, then it will appear that the study of specific forms, when carried through great 
geological cycles, is, in reality, a study, not so much of parentage, as of the functional or 
dynamical energy of physical conditions. The question of what constitutes species is by 
no means necessarily connected with that of parentage. Naturalists, measuring nature by 
limited periods of time, have too often fallen into the error of regarding specific sameness 
as a mark of common origin. Very philosophically observes Dr. Leidt : " Naturalists have 
not yet systematized that knowledge through which they practically estimate the value of 
characters determining a species. What maybe viewed as distinct snb-genera by one, will 
be considered as only distinct species by another, and a third may view both as varieties 
or races. In the use of these words, or rather in the attempt to define them, we go too far 
when we associate them with the nature of the origin of the beings in question. We know 
nothing whatever in relation to the origin of living beings, and even we cannot positively 
deny that life connected with some form was not co-eternal with time, space, and matter, 
and that all living beings have not successively and divergingly ascended from the lowest 
types." [Description of Remains of Extinct Mammalia. Journal Acad. Nat. Sciences, N. S., 
iii. 167.) 



OF THE RACES OF MEN. 351 

14. That typical forms of crania increase in number as we go 
from the poles to the equator. 

15. That the lower forms are found in the regions of excessive cold 
and excessive heat; the higher occupying the middle temperate region. 

16. That cranial forms are inseparably connected with the physics 
of the globe. 

The entire arctic zone is characterized by a remarkable uniformity 
or sameness of climatic condition and animal distribution. The 
stunted plants exhibit but few specific forms ; and where the cold 
is most intense and most prolonged, this uniformity is most evident. 
Here, also, the human cranial type is least varied. Bending his steps 
southward, and traversing the temperate Asio-European continent, 
the observant traveller becomes aware of a gradual increase in the 
light and heat of the sun ; and accompanying this increase, he 
beholds a peculiar and much more diversified flora and fauna. 
At every step, organic forms multiply around him, and monotony 
slowly gives place to variety ; a variety, moreover, in which a 
remarkable system of resemblance or representation is preserved. 
"The temperate zone," says Agassiz, "is not characterized, like 
the arctic, by one and the same fauna; it does not form, as the 
arctic does, one continuous zoological zone around the globe." 
And, again, he says : " The geographical distribution of animals 
in this zone, forms several closely connected, but distinct com- 
binations." Now, we have already seen that the globular, cranial 
type of this region is more varied than the pyramidal form of the 
extreme North. The Kalmuck or true Mongolian, the Tartar, 
Chinese, Japanese, and Turkish types of skull are all, to a certain 
extent, related, and yet are all readily distinguishable from each 
other. Each of these groups, again, presents several cranial va- 
rieties. So, among the barbarous aborigines of North America, 
notwithstanding the general osteologic assimilation of their crania, 
important tribal distinctions can be readily pointed out. It is inte- 
resting also to remark, that in the Turkish area, we are to look for 
the traces of transition from the Mongolian to the European forms 

— a fact singularly in keeping with the statement of Agassiz, that 
the Caspian fauna partakes partly of the Asiatic, and partly of the 
European zoological character. 

It is a general and very well-known fact — first noticed by Buffbn 

— that the fauna and flora of the old world are not specifically iden- 
tical with the fauna and flora of the new. Their relationship is 
manifested in an interesting system of representation, or as Schouw 
expresses it, of geographical repetition according to climate. To a 
certain extent, human cranial forms appear also to fall within the 
limits of this system. As far as my own opportunities for exami- 



352 CRANIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

nation have gone, I have not been able to find a single aboriginal 
American type of skull which, in all its essential details, could be 
regarded as strictly identical with any in Europe, Asia, Africa, or 
Australia. The closest approximation between the two hemi- 
spheres, in this respect, is to be found in the Arctic region ; and 
it is precisely in this region that the organic species of the two 
worlds resemble each other most closely. The massive, heavy 
skulls of northern temperate Asia and Europe are represented in 
America by those of the Barbarous tribes — decidedly different, but 
allied forms. So the comparatively small-headed Peruvians repre- 
sent the equally small-headed Hindoos, while the American Indian 
type, according to Lieut. Habersham, again repeats itself in a most 
curious manner in the Island of Formosa. 

It would thus appear, that upon the same general principles, of 
which Humboldt availed himself in dividing the surface of the earth 
into isothermic zones, or that Latreille followed in laying clown his 
iusect-realms, or that guided Forbes in the construction of homoiozoic 
belts of marine life, the ethnographer may establish, with equal pro- 
priety, hcmoiokephalic zones or realms of meu, whose limits, though 
far from being sharply defined, are nevertheless sufficiently well- 
marked to show that nature's idea of localization and representation 
appertains to man, as to all the numerous and varied forms of life. 

"When, at length, our traveller reaches the tropics, he there, under 
the calorific and luminous influence of a powerful sun, beholds animal 
and vegetable life revelling in a multiplicity of forms. Human 
cranial types constitute no exception to this statement. In the 
African and Polynesian regions of the sun, the races or tribes of 
men, differing from each other in physical characters, are, as we 
have already seen, quite numerous. The same appears to be true 
also, though in a less marked degree, in northern South America. 
Finally, then, in view of all these leading facts, whose details would 
here be obviously misplaced, may we not conclude that cranial forms 
are definitely related to geographical locality, and its attendant climatic 
conditions : and may we not, furthermore, suspect that the unity of such 
forms should be sought neither in a uniformity of structural plan, nor 
in the successive development of higher from lower types, nor even 
in the organic cell, the primordial expression of the animal and the 
plant, but in that pervading physical principle whose plastic energy 
attains its maximum in the regions overlying the thermometric equa- 
tor, and under whose controlling influence all matter — both organic 
and inorganic — assumes a regular and definite form ? 

J. A. M. 

Philadelphia, No. 597 Lombard St. 



ACCLIMATION, ETC. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

ACCLIMATION ; OR, THE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE, ENDEMIC 
AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES, ON THE RACES OF MAN. 

BY J. C. NOIT, M.D. 



In the preceding chapters, man has been viewed from opposite 
stand-points ; and each new group of facts would seem to lead more 
and more directly to the conclusion, that certain distinct types 
of the human family are as ancient and as permanent as the Faunas 
and Floras which surround them. 

"We propose, in the present chapter, to investigate the subject of 
Acclimation; that is to say, of Races, in their relations to Climate, 
Endemic and Epidemic Diseases ; and if it should be made to appear 
that each type of mankind, like a species of animals or plants, has 
its appropriate climate or station, and that it cannot by any process, 
however gradual, or in any number of generations, become fully 
habituated to those of opposite character, another strong confirma- 
tion will be added to the conclusion above alluded to. 

The study of the physical history of man is beset by numerous 
difficulties, such as embarrass no other department of Zoology. Man 
has not only a physical, but a moral nature ; the latter forming an 
important element in the investigation, and exerting a powerful 
influence over his physical structure. Inasmuch as we are now 
seeking to ascertain all those agencies which can in any way modify 
the physical condition of individuals or races, we shall, for conve- 
nience, include, under the general term of Climate, 1 geographical 

1 This is a loose definition, but we have no word in our language sufficiently comprehen- 
sive to answer our purpose. The French employ the term milieu, which covers the ground 
fully. The milieu (middle) in which an animal or plant is placed, includes every modifying 
influence belonging to the locality. The reader will therefore excuse me for using an old 
word in a new and arbitrary sense. 

28 



354 acclimation; or, the influence op 

position, habits, social condition, moral influences; in short, every 
combination of circumstances that can change the constitution of 
man. 

The subject of Climate may be divided, and treated under two 
distinct heads, viz. — -Physical Climate and Medical Climate. The 
consideration of the former appertains more particularly to the 
naturalist, whose province it is to treat of botanical and zoological 
geography, or the geographical distribution of animals and plants. 
Followed out in all its bearings, this department has been made, by 
Prichard and others, to include the whole physical history of man, 
and to explain all the diversities of type seen in the human family. 
The latter, or Medical Climate, refers to climate in its effects on the 
body, whether in preventing, causing, or curing diseases ; and it is 
this branch of the subject which will mainly engage our attention at 
present, although we shall be obliged incidentally to trench upon 
the other. 

Our limits forbid the examination in detail, to any extent, of the 
effects of Physical Climate; but, fortunately, knowledge in this 
department has so greatly advanced of late years, as to permit us to 
pass over, as well settled among naturalists, certain points which 
formerly consumed a large share of time. It was long taught, for 
example, that types were constantly changing and new ones form- 
ing, under the influence of existing causes ; but we may now assume, 
without the fear of contradiction from a naturalist, that, within his- 
torical times, no example can be adduced of the transformation of 
one type of man into another, or of the origination of a new type. 
Writers still living have boldly attributed to climate almost illimi- 
table influence on man. Numerous citations have been given, from 
credulous travellers, showing examples of white men transformed 
by a tropical sun into negroes ; of negroes blanched into Caucasians ; 
of Jews changed into Hindoos, Africans, American Indians, and 
what not. In short, the whole human family has been derived (as 
well as all the animals of the earth) from Noah's ark, which landed 
on Mount Ararat some 4000 years ago. 

Such crude ideas obstinately maintained their ground, in spite of 
science, until it was proven beyond dispute, from the venerable 
monuments of Egypt, that the races of men, of all colors, now seen 
around the Mediterranean, inhabited the same countries, with their 
present physical characteristics, fully 5000 years ago ; that is, long 
before the birth of either Moses, Noah, or even Adam — were we to 
believe in the chronology of Archbishop Usher. Nor did these 
various races exist merely as scattered individuals in those early 
times, but as nations, warring with each other. Since these discove- 



CLIMATE A]STD DISEASES ON MAN. 35-5 

ries, we hear, among the well informed, no more abont the influence 
of existing climates in transforming races. 2 

No one who has studied the natural history of man will he dis- 
posed to deny the great modifying influence of both physical and 
moral causes ; but the questions arise as to the nature and extent of 
the changes produced. Has any one type been transformed into 
another ? or has a new one originated since the living types of the 
animal kingdom were called into existence ? 

That the modifying influence of climate is great, nay, quite as 
great, on man, as on many of the inferior animals, we possess the 
evidence around us every day in our cities. By way of illustration, 
the Jewish race might be cited, being the one most widely spread, 
the longest and most generally known. Whenever the word Jew is 
pronounced, a peculiar type is at once called up to the mind's eye ; 
and wherever, in the four quarters of the globe, surrounded by other 
races, the descendants of Abraham are encountered, this type at 
once stands out in bold relief. In each one of the synagogues of 
our large cities (in the United States), may be seen congregated, 
every Saturday, Israelites from various nationalities of the earth. 
Nevertheless, although they differ notably in stature, form, com- 
plexion, hair, shape and size of head, presenting in fact infinite 
varieties, yet, when of pure Hebrew blood, they all revolve around a 
common type, which identifies their race. 

It should be remarked, in passing, that the Jewish, though com- 
paratively a pure race, is notwithstanding much adulterated by 
inter-marriages with Gentiles during all ages, from the time of 
Abraham to the present. It is true that we often see individuals 
worshipping at their shrines who are wanting in the true lineaments 
of the race ; but this may be always explained by the admixture of 
foreign blood, or through conversions of other types to Judaism. 3 
It has been clearly shown that the Jewish type can be followed up 
through the stream of time backward from the present day to the 
IV. Dynasty of Egypt (a period of more than 5000 years), where it 
stands face to face with that of the Egyptian and other races. This 
type, too, is abundantly and beautifully delineated amid the ruins 
of Nineveh and Babylon, back to ages coetaneous with the Hebrew 
monarchy.* 



2 The unity party have been obliged, since these discoveries in Egypt, to abandon all 
scientific deductions, or reasoning from facts, and to fall back upon a miraculous transfor- 
mation of one race into many ; which metamorphosis is supposed to have occurred prior to 
the foundation of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Hindoo empires. 

3 See " Types of Mankind," Chap. IV., "Physical History of the Jews." 
* Ibid. Also, Layard's Nineveh. 



?>56 acclimation; or, the influence of 

All races of men, like animals, possess a certain degree of consti- 
tutional pliability, which enables them to bear great changes of 
temperature or latitude ; and those races that are indigenous to 
temperate climates, having a wide thermometrical range, support 
best the extremes of other latitudes, whether hot or cold. Hence 
such races might be regarded almost as cosmopolites. In accordance 
with this idea, the Jews, who were originally scattered between 30° 
and 40° north latitude (where they were subjected to considerable 
heat in summer and cold in winter), were already well prepared to 
become acclimated to far greater extremes of temperature in other 
latitudes. The inhabitants of the Arctic, also, as well as those of 
the Tropics, have a certain pliancy of constitution ; but, while the 
Jew and other inhabitants of the middle latitudes may migrate 30 
degrees south, or 30 degrees north, with comparative impunity, the 
Eskimau on the one extreme, or the Negro, Hindoo, and Malay 
on the other, have no power to withstand the vicissitudes of climate 
encountered in traversing the 70 degrees of latitude between Green- 
land and the equator. Each race has its prescribed salubrious limits. 
The fair races of Northern Europe, below the Arctic zone, of which 
the Anglo-Saxons are impure descendants, will serve as another 
illustration. These races are now -scattered over most parts of the 
habitable globe ; and, in many instances, they have undergone far 
greater physical changes than the Jews. The climates, for instance, 
of Jamaica, Louisiana, and India, are to them much more extreme 
than to the Jewish race. The Israelite may be recognized any- 
where ; but not so with the Scandinavian and his descendants in the 
tropics. The latter becomes tanned, emaciated, debilitated ; his 
countenance, energy, everything undergoes a change : and were we 
not familiar, from daily observation, with these effects of climate 
upon northern races, we should not suspect the original ancestry of 
many of the present inhabitants of hot climates. In these cases we 
behold, not simply a healthful modification of the physical and 
intellectual man, but a positively morbid degradation. The pure 
white man carried into the tropic deteriorates both in mind and 
body; the average duration of his life is lessened; and, without 
fresh importations, his race would in time become extinct. When, 
however, his descendants are taken back to their native climes, they 
revert to the healthful standard of their original types : the latter 
may have been distorted, but can never be lost, except in death. 

[This fact may be familiarly exemplified by the habits of English 
sojourners {colonists they cannot be termed) now scattered through- 
out Hindostan and the Indian Archipelago, on both sides of Africa 
a few hundred miles north of the Cape, along the southern shores 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 357 

of the Mediterranean, in the West Indies, South America, and else- 
where. Such emigrants are, moreover, out of all proportion, athletic 
adults before quitting their birth-place; who set forth with the 
intention, and are ever cheered by the hope, of returning home the 
moment their ambition is realized. Few, notwithstanding, come 
back to their native land with constitutions unimpaired; but, in no 
cases do those English whose means are not absolutely insignificant, 
attempt to rear up their children in any of the above tropical 
regions. If they do so, parents mourn over the graves of lost 
offspring, or sigh on beholding the sickly appearance of the sur- 
viving: of the latter, an adult generation, especially amongst the 
females, suffering under hourly-increasing morbific influence, is 
destined to succumb far within the average limits of longevity that 
would have been accorded to them by a life-insurance actuary, had 
they grown up in Europe. On the contrary, every sacrifice is made, 
under the name of "education," to send them homeward, in order 
that they may become constitutionally retempered, before they are 
once more exposed to such deleterious intertropical influences. So 
true is this rule, that, on the authority of a friend of Mr. Gliddon's, 
Major General Bagnold, of the Hon. East India Company's Service 
— a veteran who now, with his family, in London, practically carries 
into effect half a century of Oriental experiences — we know that the 
oldest purely-English regiment in India, the "Bombay Tufts," not- 
withstanding that marriages with British females are encouraged, 
has never been able, from the time of Charles H. to the present 
hour, to rear, from births in the corps, boys enough to supply its 
drummers and fifers. 

The same rule holds good with the Dutch in Batavia and other 
Indian islands. Their children, when of pure blood, in health are 
weakly; when half-caste, worse. Where, however, as frequently 
happens in our Gulf States, such half-caste is produced by the union 
of South {dark) Europeans with negresses or squaws, a hardier 
animal appears to be the result. Hear Desjobbrt : 

"Le Francais s'acclimate-t-il? ses enfans s elevent-ils en Algerie? We speak of Frenchmen, 
and not of those Spanish, Italian, and Maltese populations which, coming from a country 
more analogous in climate [and heing in type dark races, also], bear better than our fellow- 
countrymen the influence of the African climate. 

" Algerian colonists have always confounded, under the same name of colony, every 
establishment of Europeans out of Europe. They have not reflected that, in climates 
different from those of Europe, he [the European] labors but little in body. He more 
frequently commands, administrates, or follows mercantile pursuits in the cities [not in the 
country]. 

" French and English races labor in Canada, in the northern parts of the United States, 
and in New Holland; but, in the Southern States of the Union, at the Antilles, Guayanas, 



358 acclimation; or, the influence of 

and the isles of Mauritius and Bourbon, it is the [exotic] blacks who work ; in India, it is 
the Hindoo. 

" Spaniards, it is true, do labor a little at Cuba and at Porto Eico. But they had inha- 
bited, in Europe, a hotter climate than the French and English. [For the same reason, 
joined to their dark race, our white fishermen, in the bayous from Charleston, S. C, to 
Galveston, Texas, are the only men who, with comparative security, ply their vocation the 
whole year round: and they are Spaniards, Portuguese, Maltese, or else mulattos.] They 
work also a little in America, especially when the altitude of the soil makes up for the 
latitude of the country, as in Mexico and Peru ; or when the climate is far more temperate, 
as in Buenos Ayres ; and even then, this labor cannot be compared to the work performed 
in France and in England [and north of " Mason and Dixon's line"]. At the Philippines, 
it is the native that labors. 

"The Dutchman works not out of Europe: at Java, it is the Malay; at Guyana, it is 
the black who labors. 

" The Portuguese never labors in India. In Brazil and at Guyana it is the black who 
works for him;" [in Central America, it is the Carib, the Toltecan Indian, or the half- 
caste.] 5 

In Egypt, no European nor Turk risks his own person as an 
agriculturist: the labor is performed there, as in Mesopotamia, by 
the indigenous Fellah. At Madagascar the Frenchman, as in Sierra 
Leone the Englishman, dies off if he attempts it. In Algeria, the 
French are beginning to find out that, unless the Arab or the Kabyle 
will plough the fields for them, colonization is hopeless. 6 And, lastly, 
were not this fact of the non-acclimation of white races, a few 
degrees north and south of the equinoctial line, now recognized by 
experience, why should Coolies from India and Malayana, as well as 
Chinese "apprentices," be eagerly contracted for at Bourbon, the 
Mauritius, the West Indies, and in Southern America ? 

The truth of these propositions will be investigated hereinafter.] 
The negro, too, obeys the law of climate. Unlike the white man, 

6 Desjobert, L'Algerie, Paris, 1847, pp. 6, 7, and 26, notes. 

"Nous ne comptons ici les hommes morts dans les hopitaux [i. e. 71 per 1000, in 1846 
alone!], et nons ne parlons pas de ceux qui, reTormgs, vont mourir dans lenrs families. 
Nous ne parlons pas non plus de ceux tu6s par le feu de l'ennemi : ils sont peu nombreux. 

Nous perdons par an, en Afrique, environ 200 hommes. 

" Nous avons perdu en 1846 116 " 

" A la prise de Constantine.., 100 " 

" A la bataille d'Isly 27 " 

" AlaSmalah 9 " 

" ' Tout homme faible qu'on envoie en Afrique est un homme perdu.' — Marechai 
Bugeaud, discours du 19 fevrier, 1838." 

6 See Discours prononce par M. Desjobert (Representative in the Assemblee Rationale), 
Paris, 1850; Idem, Documents Statistiques sur VAlgerie, 1851; Boudin, Hisioire Statistique 
de la Colonisation et de la Population en Algerie, Paris, 1853, passim. 

It is with much disappointment that I am compelled to go to press with these evidences 
of the non-acclimation of races, without having received a copy of the work which Dr. 
Boudin has in press (Traite de Geographie et de Siatistique Medicates, 2 vols. 8vo., at Bail- 
lifere's, Paris). Mr. Gliddon tells me that he perused some of its proof-sheets at the author's 
house, in Oct., 1855. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 359 

his complexion undergoes no change by climate. While the white 
man is darkened by the tropical sun, the negro is never blanched in 
the slightest degree by a residence in northern latitudes. Like the 
quadrumana of the tropics, he is inevitably killed by cold ; but it 
never changes his hair, complexion, skeleton, nor size and shape of 
brain. 7 We do not propose, however, to enter into this discussion 
here. Our object is simply to call attention to the independence of 
existing types, of all climatic causes now in operation. 

While naturalists have been accumulating so much useful infor- 
mation concerning the history, durability, &c, of species in the 
animal kingdom, they leave us still in utter darkness as to the time 
or manner of their origin. Our actual Flora and Fauna extend, it 
is now ascertained, many thousand years beyond the chronologies 
taught in our schools to children ; but whether man and his asso- 
ciates have existed ten or one hundred thousand years, we have no 
data for determining. Lepsius tells us that he regards even the 
records of the early (Hid and FVth) dynasties of Egypt, as a part 
of the modern history of man. 

That organized beings have existed on earth (in the language of 
the great geologist Lyell) "millions of ages," no naturalist of our 
day will doubt; and although our knowledge is not sufficiently 
complete to enable us to follow Nature's great chain, link by link, 
yet it appears probable that there has been an ascending series, 
commencing with the simplest forms and ending with man. Geolo- 
gists have arranged the materials which compose the crust of the 
earth into igneous and sedimentary. The first, as the name implies, 
are formed by the action of heat under superincumbent pressure, 
and are composed of an aggregate of crystalline particles, without 
any order or stratification. Sedimentary rocks are composed of the 
fragments of older rocks, worn down by the action of the elements, 
and deposited in the ocean, whence, by pressure, heat, and chemical 
agency, they are re-formed into new masses, assuming a stratified and 
more or less slaty structure. 

To say nothing of subdivisions, the whole series have been divided 
into igneous rocks, primary stratified formations, secondary forma- 
tions, tertiary formations, and diluvial formations. In the first two 
divisions we find no traces of life, animal or vegetable ; in the se- 
condary we find numerous plants, mollusks, reptiles, and fishes ; and, 



' The negro races are peculiarly liable to consumption out of the tropics, or even within 
them. They are never agriculturists, either in Egypt or in Barbary : nevertheless, in both 
countries, negroes are the shortest lived of the population. Monkeys suffer to a great 
extent with the same disease, in the Garden of Plants, at Paris. Nowhere in North Europe 
or in our Northern States, can the Orang-utan live. 



360 acclimation; or, the influence op 

when we reach the tertiary, we find the shell animals approaching 
nearer, in specific forms, to existing species, than those of previous 
formations ; and along with these are skeletons of birds and mam- 
malia, including quadrupeds and quadrumana. The geological 
epoch of man has yet to be determined : it is certain that the investi- 
gations of each succeeding year tend to throw it further back in 
time ; nor are there wanting good authorities who would not be 
surprised to find his remains in the tertiary, where the quadrumana 
have been recently, and for the first time, discovered. 

A discussion of such difficulty and magnitude as the theory of 
progressive development, would be out of place here ; but this idea 
seems to have taken possession of many of our leading authorities. 
Nor, at first sight, would it seem that the long-mooted question of 
the origin of species could properly find a place in an essay on 
Medical Qlimate; yet all these subjects have points of contact, which 
render it difficult to isolate them. Our object being to study the 
influence of climates and their diseases on races, we assuredly, d 
priori, should expect species and mere varieties to be influenced in 
different degrees. Natural history teaches us that the white and 
black races, for example, are distinct species. We should, therefore, 
regard their origin as independent of climate; and if we can show 
that these races are not affected in like manner by diseases, we fortify 
the conclusion to which natural history has led us. Well-ascertained 
varieties of a given species, however widely scattered, may exchange 
habitations with comparative impunity ; while, on the contrary, as a 
general rule, each species of a genus has its prescribed geographical 
range. The species, for example, of the reindeer and the white bear, 
in the. Arctic, can no more exchange places with the deer and bear 
of the Tropics, than can the Esquimau with the tropical Negro. 
Such facts as these, then, clearly show how deeply our subject 
implicates the investigation of species and varieties. 

A great diversity of opinion has existed with regard to the origin 
of species, but we shall allude only to two of the more prominent. 
Of the first school, Cuvier may be regarded as the most distinguished 
authority. He contends that the geological history of the earth 
should be divided into distinct periods, each of which is complete in 
itself; that there has been, since the dawn of life, a succession of 
distinct creations and destructions; and that the organized beings of 
one epoch have no direct connection, by way of descent, with those 
of the preceding. According to this theory, the species of animals 
and plants now scattered over the face of the earth are primordial 
forms, the result of a special creation ; which have endured without 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 361 

material change to the present, and which ivill endure unchanged 
until their allotted term of existence has expired. 

The opposing school may he represented by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 
the contemporary of Cuvier. It is contended by his followers that 
there has been but one creation, and no cessation of life, since the 
first organized beings were brought into existence ; that, by a law 
of progressive development or evolution, in accordance with new 
climatic influences, brought into action, from time to time, by 
changes in the physical condition of the globe, the living beings of 
one period have given origin to those which follow; and so on 
through the whole chain, from the earliest and simplest forms to the 
last and most complex. Moreover, that what we term species remains 
permanent as long as the physical conditions which produced them 
remain unchanged. Some of this school go so far as to assert that 
no such tiling as "species" exists; that Nature creates only indivi- 
duals, no two animals or plants being exactly alike, and the species 
of each genus running together so closely as to leave their bounda- 
ries difficult, and often impossible, to define. They further contend, 
that transformations of species are incessantly going on around us, 
though so slowly as not to be easily recognized, in the atom of time 
which has been consumed so far by the human family. 

Those who contend that all the races of men are of common 
origin, must, in spite of themselves, fall into these heterodox opinions 
of Lamarck, Oken, and St. Hilaire ; because the races of men differ 
quite as much, anatomically and physiologically, as do the species 
of other genera in the animal kingdom — the Equidte, the Ursines, 
Felines, &c. Professor Owen himself cannot point out greater 
differences between the lion, tiger, and panther, or the dog, fox, 
wolf, and jackal, than those between the White Man, Negro, and 
Mongol. 

According to the above doctrine, not only are the individuals of 
our present Fauna and Flora direct descendants of the fossil world, 
but they are probably destined to be the ancestry of others still 
more perfect. The climatic influences now at work, it is supposed, 
will be changed, and development take up its line of march and cany 
on the great plan of the Creator. Thus, man himself is to be the 
progenitor of beings far more perfect than himself; and it must be 
confessed that there is no small room for improvement. But there 
is no good reason why we should enter the lists with these dispu- 
tants, as the two schools unite at a point which meets all the requi- 
sitions of our present investigation. The term species is, at best, 
but a conventional one, without a fixed definition ; and is used by 
both parties to designate certain groups of forms closely resembling 



362 acclimation; or, the influence of 

each other, that have been permanent as far back as our means of 
investigation reach, and which will endure as long as the Faunas 
and Floras of which they form a part. 

Our declared object is to ascertain what influence the climates of 
our day exert over existing forms, and especially over those of the 
human family. It should be borne in mind that each species has its 
own physiological and pathological laws, which give it its specific 
character ; and each species must, therefore, be made a special study. 
Too much reliance has been placed upon analogies; since no one 
animal should be taken as an analogue for another. Not only are 
they variously affected by climate, food, &c, but also by morbific 
influences. These remarks apply with their greatest force to man, 
who is widely separated from the lower animals in many things, and 
more particularly his diseases. The " Societe Zoologique d' Acclima- 
tion" of Paris, is composed of some of the most scientific men of 
France, with I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire at its head ; and to them each 
new species is a new study : they look to time and observation alone 
for their knowledge. "When a new quadruped, bird, or plant, is 
brought to France, no one pretends to foretell the exact influence 
of the new climate upon it ; and it has been ascertained that two 
species, brought from the same habitat, may be very differently 
affected. One may become habituated to a wide geographical range, 
while another only to a very limited one. 

So it is with the species of man — each must be made a separate 
study, in connection with both Physical and Medical Climate. It does 
not at all advance our knowledge of man to tell us that pigs, poultry, 
horses, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, &c, may be carried all over the 
world, may become habituated to all climates, and everywhere 
change their forms or colors. A race of men does not anywhere, 
in a few generations, like pigs, become white, brown, black, gray, 
or spotted ; nor do the pigs, when they accompany man to the 
Tropics, become affected with dyspepsia, intermittent and yellow 
fever. It has been the fashion, for want of argument, to obscure 
the natural history of man, not by a few, but by volumes of these 
analogies. Let us ask, on the other hand, when and where have 
the people of the' north become habituated to the climate of the 
Tropics, or those of the Tropics been able to live in the north ? We 
have no records to show that a race of one extreme has ever been 
acclimated to the opposite; and as long as a race preserves its 
peculiar physiological structure and laws, it must to some extent be 
peculiarly affected by morbific influences. 8 

8 It is far from being proved that our dogs, horses, cattle, and other domestic animals, 
are of common origin. The reader is referred to "Types of Mankind" and the Appendix 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 363 

In considering the climates of the Tropics and the adjacent warm 
climates, it is necessary to divide Medical Climate into non-malarial 
and malarial. By a non-malarial climate, we wish to designate 
one which is characterized by temperature, moisture or dryness, 
greater or less changeableness, &c. ; in short, all the characteristics 
of what is understood by the word "climate," independently of local 
morbific influences. By malarial climates, we mean those in which 
malarial emanations are superadded to the above conditions. The 
two climates are familiar to every one, and often exist withiu a mile 
of each other. In our Southern States, we have our high healthy 
"pine or sand-hills," bordering the rich alluvial lands of our rivers. 
On the low lands, in many places, the most deadly malarial fevers 
prevail in summer and autumn, while in the sandy lands there is an 
entire exemption from all diseases of this class ; and our cotton 
planters every summer seek these retreats for health. Not only in 
these more temperate regions of the United States is this proximity 
of the two climates observed, but also in Bengal and other parts of 
India, in the islands of the Indian Ocean, at Cape Colony, the West 
India islands, &c. Mobile and its vicinity afford as good an illus- 
tration of these climates as can be desired. This town is situated 
at the mouth of the Mobile river, in latitude 30° 40" north, on the 
margin of a plain, that extends five miles to the foot of the sand- 
hills, and which is interspersed with ravines and marshes. The 
sand-hills rise to the height of from one to three hundred feet, and 
extend many miles. Now the thermometer, barometer, and hygro- 
meter, indicate no appreciable difference in the climates of the hills 
and the plain, except that the latter is rather more damp ; and yet 
the two localities differ immensely in point of salubrity. Let us 
suppose that a thousand inhabitants of Great Britain or Germany 
should be landed at Mobile about the month of May, and one-third 
placed on the hills, one-third in the town, and the remainder in the 
fenny lands around the latter, and ask what would be the result at 
the end of six months. The first third would complain much of 
heat, would perspire enormously, become enervated ; but no one 
would perhaps be seriously sick, and probably none would die from 
the effects of the climate. The second third, or those in the city, 
if it happened to be a year of epidemic yellow fever, would, to say 
the least, be decimated, or even one-half might die, while the resi- 
dent acclimated population were enjoying perfect health. The re- 
maining portion, or those in the fenny district, would escape yellow 
fever, but would, most of them, be attacked with intermittent and 

of "Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races" — in Hotz's translation of De Gobineau, 
(Philadelphia, 1855) — for a fnll examination of this point. 



364 acclimation; or, the influence of 

remittent fevers, bowel affections, and all forms of malarial or marsh 
diseases : fewer would die than of those in the city, hut a large 
proportion would come out with broken-down constitutions. Yellow 
fever sometimes extends for two or three miles around the city ; but 
if it does, it always commences in the latter. Here, then, we have 
three distinct medical climates actually within sight of each other. 
This is by no means a peculiarity of one locality, but thousands of 
similar examples may be cited in warm climates. Charleston, South 
Carolina, its suburbs, and Sullivan's Island, in the harbor near the 
city, give us another example quite as pertinent as that of Mobile. 
In our cotton-growing States, the malarial climate is by no means 
confined to the low and marshy districts ; on the contrary, in the 
high, undulating lands throughout this extensive region, wherever 
there is fertility of soil, the population is subjected more or less to 
malarial diseases. These remarks apply, as will be seen further on, 
more particularly to the white population, the negroes being com- 
paratively exempt from all the endemic diseases of the South. 9 The 
tropical climate of Africa, so far as known to us, differs widely from 
the same parallels in other parts of the globe : it has no won-malarial 
climate. Dr. Livingstone "has been struck down by African fever 
upwards of thirty times," in sixteen years. 10 

But let us go a little more into details, and examine a few of the 
races of man, in connection with non-malarial climates. The Anglo- 
Saxon is the most migrating and colonizing race of the present day, 
and may be selected for illustration. Place an Englishman in the 
most healthful part of Bengal or Jamaica, where malarial fevers are 
unknown, and although he may be subjected to no attack of acute 
disease, may, as we are told, become acclimated, and may live with a 
tolerable degree of health his threescore and ten years ; yet, he soon 
ceases to be the same individual, and his descendants degenerate. 
He complains bitterly of the heat, becomes tanned; his plump, 
plethoric frame is attenuated ; his blood loses fibrine and red globules ; 
both body and mind become sluggish ; gray hairs and other marks 
of premature age appear — a man of 40 looks fifty years old — the 
average duration of life is shortened (as shown by life-insurance 
tables); and the race in time would be exterminated, if cut off from 
fresh supplies of immigrants. The same facts hold in our Southern 



9 A medical friend (Dr. Gordon) who has had much experience in the diseases of the 
interior of Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana, has been so kind as to look over these 
sheets for me, and assures me that I have used language much too strong with regard to 
the exemption of negroes. He says they are quite as liable as the whites, according to his 
observations, to intermittents and dysentery. 

10 "London Chronicle," Dec. 15, 1856. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 365 

States, though in a less degree ; and the effect is in proportion to the 
high range of temperature. We here have short winters, which do 
not exist in the Tropics ; and the wear and tear of long summers 
are by them, to a great extent, counterbalanced. The English army 
surgeons tell us that Englishmen do not become acclimated in India: 
length of residence affords no immunity, but, on the contrary, the 
mortality among officers and troops is greatest among those who 
remain longest in the climate. 11 

Tbere is no reason to believe that the Anglo-Saxon can ever be 
transformed into a Hindoo. We have already given reasons why 
Jews become acclimated, in hot latitudes, with more facility than 
races further north; but even these cannot be changed from their 
original type by ages of residence in foreign climes. There is a 
little colony of Jews at Cranganor, in Malabar, near Cochin, who 
have resided there more than 1000 years, and who have preserved 
the Jewish type unchanged. There is in the same neighborhood a 
settlement of what are called black Jews, but who are of Hindoo 
blood. 12 Tbere are also in India the Parsees, who have been almost 
as long in the country as the Jews, and still do not approximate to 
the Hindoos in type. Way, more, in India itself we see, in the 
different castes, the most opposite complexions, which have remained 
independent of climate several thousand years. Unlike the Anglo- 
Saxons, the Jews seem to bear up well against that climate. 

The colonists of warm countries nowhere present the same vigoi 
of constitution as the population of Great Britain or Germany; and 
although they may escape attacks of fever, they are annoyed by 
many minor ills, which make them a physic-taking and shorter-lived 
people. Knox asserts that the Germanic races would die out in 
America if left alone ; and though I am not disposed to go to his 
extremes, I do not believe that even our 3sTew England States are so 
well adapted to those races as the temperate zone of Europe, from 
which history derives them. 

There is, unquestionably, an acclimation, though imperfect, against 
moderately high temperature ; and it is equally true, that persons 
who have gone through this process, and more especially their 
children, when grown up, are less liable to violent attacks of our 
marsh fevers, when exposed to them, than fresh immigrants from 
the north. The latter are more plethoric, their systems more in- 
flammable ; and although not more liable to be attacked by these 
endemics than natives, they expeiience them, when attacked, in a 

11 Johnson on Tropical Climates, London, 1841, p. 56. 

12 See, for details, "Types of Mankind" by Nott & Glidbon, chapter "Physical History 
of the Jews." 



366 acclimation; or, the influence of 

more violent and dangerous form. The latter fact holds good of 
yellow, as well as of remittent fever. 

Dr. Boudin, in his "Lettres sur l'Algerie," after establishing the 
persistent influence of marsh malaria on French and English colo- 
nists, continues thus : 

"Reste a examiner 1'influence exercee sur le chiffre des deces par le sejour dans les 
locality de l'Algerie, non sujeltes aux emanations paludeennes, mais se distinguant de la 
France uniquement par une temperature eievee. A deTaut de documents assez nombreux 
vecueillis en Algerie meme, nous invoquerons les faits relatifs a, deux possessions anglaises 
ayant la plus grande analogie thermome'trique avec notre possession africaine; nous voulons 
parler: 1°, du Cap de Bonne-Esperance ; 2°, de Malte: Tun et l'autre proverbialement 
exempted de l'<jl6nient paludeen. 

"Au Cap de Bonne-Esperance, la mortality de trois regiments anglais, de 1831 a 1830, 
a ete representee par les nombres suivants : 

En 1831 26 deces. 

" 1832 26 

" 1833 28 

" 1834 28 

" 1835 34 

" 1836 33 

"A Malte, oil Ton peut considerer les hommes les plus jeunes comme les plus recemment 
arrives d'Angleterre, la proportion des deces a suivi la marche ci-apres. 

Au-dessous de 18 ans 10 deces sur 1000 hommes. 

Del8a25 18.7 " 

" 25 a, 33 23.6 " 

" 33 a 40 29.5 " 

" 40 a 50 34.4 " 

"En resume, les analogies puisees, non seulement dans les localites paludeennes, mais 
encore dans les contrees non marecageuses, ayant une plus grande analogie climatologique 
avec l'Algerie, se montrent peu favorable a, l'hypothese de l'acclimatment." 

He then goes on to give statistics both of the civil and military 
population of Algeria, which show still more deadly effects of 
climate. 

If we turn now to the physical history of the Negro, we shall find 
the picture completely reversed. He is the native of the hottest 
region on the globe, where he goes naked in the scorching rays of 
the sun, and can lie down and sleep on the ground in a temperature 
of at least 150° of Fahrenheit, where the white man would die in a 
few hours. {And while the degenerate tropical descendants of the 
whites are regenerated by transportation to cold parallels of the 
temperate zone, experience abundantly proves that, in America, the 
Negro steadily deteriorates, and becomes exterminated north of about 
40° north latitude. The statistics of New England, New York, and 
Philadelphia, abundantly prove this. The mortality of blacks in 
our Northern States averages about double that of the whites ; and 
although their natural improvidence and social condition may, and 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 367 

do, have an influence on this result, still, no one conversant with 
the facts will deny the baneful influence of cold upon the race. ' 

/It is evident, then, that the white and black races differ, at the 
present day, as, much in their physiological as they do in their phy- 
sical characters 7 ; and until their actual characteristics are changed, 
it" cannot be expected that their normal geographical range will be 
enlarged. The respective types which they now present, antedate 
all human, written, or monumental records, and will only disappear 
with the other typical forms of our Fauna. 

We may here refer to another curious train of facts, in connection 
with the adaptability of the above races to climate. "We allude to 
the results of crossing or breeding them together, which seem best 
explained by the laws of hybridity. The mulattoes, no matter 
where born, north or south, possess characteristics, in reference to 
medical climate, intermediate between the pure races. The mulat- 
toes brought from Maryland or Virginia to Mobile or ]STew Orleans, 
suffer infinitely less from the diseases of these localities, than do the 
pure whites of the same States. In fact, the smallest admixture of 
negro blood, as in the Quarteroon or Quinteroon, is a great, though 
not absolute, protection against yellow fever. "We have, in the 
course of twenty years' professional observations, in Mobile, seen 
this fact fully tested ; and it is conceded, on all hands, throughout 
the South. Previously to the memorable yellow fever epidemic of 
1853, we never saw more than two or three exceptions ; and although 
there were more examples in that year, still, the mortality was 
trifling compared with that of the pure whites. I hazard nothing in 
the assertion, that one-fourth negro blood is a more perfect protec- 
tion against yellow fever, than is vaccine against small-pox. 

The subject of hybridity has been very imperfectly understood 
until the last few years ; and to the late Dr. Morton are we mainly 
indebted for the advance actually made. He has shown that there 
is a regular gradation, in hybridity among species, from that of 
perfect sterility to perfect prolificacy. The mulatto would seem to 
fall into that condition of hybrids, where they continue to be more 
or less prolific for a few generations, but with a constant tendency 
to run out. The idea is prevalent with us, that mulattoes are less 
prolific than either pure race ; suffer much from tubercular affec- 
tions ; their children die young ; and that their average duration of 
life is very low. That all this is true of the cross of the pure whites 
and blacks, I have no doubt ; but these remarks apply with less force 
to the cross of Spaniards, Portuguese, and other dark races, with the 
negro : these affiliate much better. If we could select the pure- 
blooded races, put them together, and continue crossing them for 



368 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

several generations, we might come to more definite conclusions 
with regard to the specific proximity of races ; but this we are unable 
to control ; nor has sufficient use been made even of the materials 
we have at command. Only a few years ago, the origin of the 
domestic dog was a subject of dispute, and many naturalists sup- 
posed it to be derived from the wolf; but M. Flourens has been 
making a series of experiments, in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, 
which settles this part of the discussion. He ascertained that the 
progeny becomes sterile after the third generation ; while that of the 
dog and jackal run as far as the fourth generation, and then in like 
manner become sterile. These are important discoveries in the 
history of hybridity, and show how erroneous have been conclusions 
as to identity of species, based upon prolificacy of offspring. 

There is reason, as above stated, to believe that this law of hy- 
bridity applies to the species of man ; and that there are degrees of 
fertility in the offspring of different types, in proportion as they are 
similar or dissimilar. 13 

Our limits, if we desired to do so, would not permit a more 
extended examination of races, in connection with non-malarial 
climates ; and we shall therefore pass on to another division of the 
subject. The whites and blacks have sufficiently served to illustrate 
the point ; and the other races would show similar effects, in various 
degrees. Many facts bearing on other races will be brought out as 
we progress. 

Malarial Climates. — Under this head, we shall introduce facts to 
prove that races are influenced differently, not only by the tempera- 
ture of various latitudes, but by morbific agents, which, to a certain 
extent, are independent of mere temperature — viz., the causes of 
marsh or yellow fevers, typhoid fever, cholera, plague, &e. Our 
illustrations will be again taken mostly from the white and black 
races, because they afford the fullest statistics, and because the 
writer has been professionally engaged with these races for more 
than thirty years, and is familiar with the peculiarities of both. 

"We should here call attention to a striking physiological difference 
between the two races. It was a remark annually made by the 
distinguished Dr. Chapman, Professor of Practice in the Pennsyl- 
vania University : '{That the negro is much less subject to inflammatory 
diseases, with high vascular action, than the whites, and rarely bears 
blood-letting, or depletion in any form; and even in pleurisy, pneu- 
monia, &c, he often requires stimulants instead of depletants." 

13 For a full discussion of the question of hybridity, see Nott & Gliddon's " Types of 
Mankind" pp. 372-410: — and also the Appendix, by J. C. Nott, to Hotz's Gobineau, pp 
489-504. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 3G9 

The remark is unquestionably true; and will be vouched for by 
every experienced physician North and South. I have had under 
ray charge, for some years, a private infirmary, devoted to negroes ; 
in which are annually received a large number of negro laborers, 
and most of them from our city cotton-presses and steamboats, 
where none but the most athletic are employed. When seized with 
pneumonia, pleurisy, and other acute diseases of winter (to say 
nothing of summer affections), they almost invariably come in with 
feeble pulse, cool skin, unstrung muscles, and all the symptoms of 
prostration ; and require to be treated mainly with revulsives, qui- 
nine, and stimulants. This I remarked also in Philadelphia, when 
a resident student at the Almshouse ; and all the medical writers of 
the South sustain me. The negro, too, always suffers more than 
whites from cholera, typhoid fever, 14 plague, small-pox, and all those 
diseases arising from morbid poisons, that have a tendency to de- 
press the powers of life, with the exception of marsh and yellow 
fevers — to which, we shall see, he is infinitely less liable. The 
planters of the South look with terror to the appearance of cholera 
or typhoid diseases among their negroes; and whether these be 
natives of the extreme South, or recently brought from the colder 
and more salubrious regions of Maryland and Virginia, it matters 
not : the susceptibility belongs to the race, and is little influenced by 
place of birth. 

The strictly white races reach their highest physical and intellec- 
tual development, as well as most perfect health and greatest average 
duration of life, above latitude 40° m the Western, and 45° in the 
Eastern Hemisphere ; and whenever they migrate many degrees 
below these lines, they begin to deteriorate from increased tempera- 
ture, either alone, or combined with morbific influences incident to 
climate. On the continent of Europe, there has been, for several 
thousand years, such a constant flux and reflux of peoples, from 
wars and migrations, that races have become so mingled, from the 
Mediterranean to the Arctic, as to render it impossible now to 
unravel this human maze, and to give its proper value to each 
indigenous race, of which we believe there were many. We must, 
therefore, take them in masses or groups ; and, in speaking of white 
I'aces, we shall draw our illustrations mostly from Anglo-Saxons, 
Celts, and Germans, which are so nearly allied, and so like in tem- 
perament, as to answer sufficiently well our present wants. They, 
too, have been widely scattered through foreign climates; and, 

14 Dr. Boudin, in his "Pathologic OomparSe." gives abundant proof of the liability of 
negroes to typhoid fever, consumption, and cholera, in the Tropics and in the Old World. 

24 



370 ACCLIMATTON; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

thanks to their intelligence, have furnished us with reliable statis- 
tics. There are many races in Europe that, according to our view, 
cannot strictly be included with the above class, viz., the dark- 
skinned Iberians, the Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and others. 

Let us next inquire what real progress has been made towards the 
acclimation of white races in tropical climates. Although we have 
writings in abundance on the subject, they are mostly vague and 
unsatisfactory ; and even a precise definition of the term is wanting. 
All we can hope, within our limits, is to lay out some land-marks, 
which may stimulate others to greater detail. 

Dr. Rochoux has attempted a somewhat precise definition of the 
term acclimation; and perhaps a better one cannot be given in the 
present state of knowledge. He says: "Acclimation is a profound 
change in the organism, produced by a prolonged sojourn in a place 
whose climate is widely different from that to which one is accus- 
tomed ; and which has the effect of rendering the individual who 
has been subjected to it similar, in many respects, to the natives 
[indigenes) of the country which he has adopted." 

This definition strikes at once a leading difficulty in this discus- 
sion, and one which should, as far as possible, be cleared away, 
before we can fully estimate the influence of climate on mankind. 
Who are these " indigenes" of whom Rochoux speaks? Are they, 
in all cases, really descendants of the same original stock as those 
who come to seek acclimation ? Here, I repeat, are questions that 
have not been fully nor fairly examined, even by Prichard, the great 
champion of the unity of the human race ; and which embarrass 
our progress at every step. 

Dr. Prichard remarks : " It is well known that the proportional 
number of individuals who attain a given age, differs in different 
climates ; and that the warmer the climate, other circumstances 
being equal, so much the shorter is the average duration of human 
life. Even within the limits of Europe, the difference is very great. 
In some instances, according to the calculations of M. Moreau de 
Jonnes, the rate of mortality, and inversely the duration of life, 
differ by nearly one-half from the proportions discovered in other 
examples. The following is a brief extract from a table presented 
by this celebrated calculator of the Institute : 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 371 

" TABLE EXHIBITING THE ANNUAL MORTALITY IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES IN 

EUROPE. 

In Sweden from 1821 to 1825 , 1 death in 45 

Denmark " 1819 " 45 

Germany " 1825 " 45 

Prussia " 1821 to 1824 " 39 

Austrian Empire " 1825 to 1830 " 43 

Holland " 1824 " 40 

GreatBritain " 1800 to 1804 " 47 

France " 1825 to 1827 " 39.5 

Canton deVaud " 1824 " 47 

Lombardy " 1827 to 1828 " 31 

Roman States " 1820 " 28 

Scotland , " 1821 " 50 

"The difference of twenty-eight and fifty is considerable; but even the latter rate of 
mortality is considerably greater than that which the data collected by M. Moreau de 
Jonnes attribute to Iceland, Norway, and the northern parts of Scotland. 

" In approaching the equator, we find the mortality increase, and the average duration 
of life consequently diminish. The following calculation, obtained by the same writer, 
sufficiently illustrates this remark : 

LATITUDE. PLACES. ONE DEATH IN 

6° 10' Batavia 26 inhabitants. 

10° 10' Trinidad 27 " 

13° 54' Sainte Lucie 27 " 

14° 44' Martinique 28 " 

15° 59' Guadaloupe 27 " 

18° 36' Bombay 20 " 

22° 33' Calcutta 20 " 

23° 11' Havana 33 " 

"It has been observed that, in some of these instances, the rate of mortality appears 
greater than that which properly belongs to the climate ; as some of the countries men- 
tioned include cities and districts known to be, by local situation, extremely unhealthy. 16 
In some, the mortality belongs, in great part, to strangers, principally Europeans, who, 
coming from a different climate, suffer in great numbers. The separate division from 
which the collective numbers above given are deduced, will sufficiently indicate these 
circumstances. 

In Batavia, 1805 Europeans died 1 in 11 

" Slaves 1 " 13 

" Chinese 1 " 29 

" Javanese, viz., Natives 1 " 40 

Calcutta, 1817 to 1836 Europeans and Eurasians 1 " 28 

" Portuguese and French 1 " 8 

1822 to 1836 Western Mahommedansl 

Bengal 

" Moguls 

" Arabs 

15 A striking proof of the difference between a malarial and non-malarial climate, in 
close proximity. — J. C. N. 



372 acclimation; or, the influence of 



lin!6 



Calcutta, 1822 to 1836 Western Hindus died...." 

" Bengal Hindus 

" Low Castes 

" Mugs \ 

Bombay, 1815 Europeans 1 " 18.5 

" Mussulmans 1 " 17.5 

" Parsees 1 " 40 

Guadaloupe, 1811 to 1824 Whites 1 "22 

" Free men of color 1 " 35 

Martinique, 1825 .' Whites 1 " 24 

" Free men of color. 1 " 23 

Granada, 1815 Slaves 1 "22 

In Saint Lucia, 1802 Slaves 1 " 20 

"The comparatively low degree of mortality among the free men of color, in the West 
Indies, and the Javanese and Parsees, in countries where those races are either the original 
inhabitants, or have become naturalized by an abode of some centuries, is remarkable, in 
the preceding table. It would seem that such persons are exempted, in a great measure, 
from the influence of morbific causes, which destroy Europeans and other foreigners. 
That the Tate of mortality should be lower among them than in the southern parts of Europe, is 
a fact which, in the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to explain." 16 

It appears, from these tables, which are corroborated by all 
subsequent statistics of tbe above-named countries, as well as those 
of the United States, that the whites show the greatest average 
duration of life in temperate latitudes. Russia, it seems, gives a 
higher rate of mortality than any cold climate short of the Arctic 
(of which we want statistics) ; and why the great difference of mor- 
tality in several of these countries, differing apparently so little in 
climate, it is impossible, in the present state of knowledge, to deter- 
mine. It is, probably, in many instances, attributable to habits and 
social condition. In Russia, where the mortality is so great, it 
perhaps may be explained by a combination of causes — such as the 
extreme rigor of the climate, the oppressed condition of the serfs, 
their bad habits and improvidence, and last, though not least, the 
immigration and interblending of races foreign to the climate. In 
Norway, the mortality is put down at 1 in 54, or one-half that of 
Russia. 

The Germanic races we know to be among the most hardy and 
robust of the human family, by nature ; and yet, as we see them 
(mostly of the poorer classes), in our Southern States, they are, in 
general, a squalid-looking people. I can assign no other cause than 
their mode of life— with which, in Germany, I am not familiar. Their 
mode of sleeping, in America, is very destructive of health : they live 
in confined rooms, and lie at night between two feather-beds, even in 
our mild climate. It is impossible that any people can be healthy 
with such customs; and if a strict scrutiny were made into the habits 

16 " Physical History of Mankind, I, pp. 116-17-18. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 373 

of many of the populations above-named, it is not improbable that 
mucb of the discrepancy in their vital statistics would be explained 
by condition and habits, skill of the medical profession, &c. 17 

When we come down to the Roman States, the mortality rises to 
1 in 28, which is easily explained : there begin the malarial climates : 
and we shall see that the mortality among whites increases onwards 
to the Tropics. But Prichard makes one fundamental mistake : he 
never stops to ask a question about the adaptation of race to climate, 
but follows out his foregone conclusion, and goes on to show that, 
"in approaching the equator, the mortality increases, and the ave- 
rage duration of life consequently diminishes ;" illustrating it by 
the second table, beginning with Batavia. He is much embar- 
rassed to' account for the "low degree of mortality among the free 
men of color in the "West Indies, the Javanese and Parsees ;" and 
for a reason why "the rate of mortality should be lower among 
them, than in the southern parts of Europe"? 

Now, the reason is obvious: the blacks, Parsees, and Javanese, 
are all autochthons of hot climates, and were created to suit the 
conditions in which they have been placed, as well as all similar 
ones. The Parsees, like the Jews, were from a warm latitude ori- 
ginally, and soon become acclimated; but the Anglo-Saxon, and 
kindred races, never thrive and never will prosper in such climates. 
Even in Italy, the white races die, when a negro might live, or a 
coolie would nourish. The same remarks apply to the Chinese, the 
Mahomedans, Moguls, and Arabs, in the last table : all are from hot 
climates, and prosper in Calcutta. 

The greater mortality among the Hindus, compared with the 
Mussulmans, is accounted for by the fact that Hindus of Calcutta- 
consist of families including a large proportion of infant life. The 
same circumstance explains the mortality of the Portuguese, who 
are also a wretched and suffering class. 18 The French (but 160) are 
included with 3181 Portuguese ; and the statement is worth nothing, 
so far as the former are concerned. 

" The native troops on the Bengal establishment," eays Captain Henderson (Asiatic 
Researches, vol. 20, part I.), " are particularly healthy, under ordinary circumstances. 

"It has been found, by a late inquiry, embracing a period of five years, that only one 
man is reported to have died per annum, out of every hundred and thirty-one of the actual 

11 While writing this, I meet with a very intelligent Prussian gentleman, who informs me 
that this mode of sleeping between feather-beds is common throughout the Germanic States, 
as well as in Russia, among the peasantry, and middle and lower classes generally. Such 
manner of sleeping precludes the possibility of regulating the covering to temperature. 
The system must be often greatly and injuriously overheated, and rendered more suscept- 
ible to the intense cold of their own climates, when exposed. 

18 Johnson & Martin's "Influence of Tropical Climates," London, 1841, p. 50. 



374 acclimation; or, the influence of 

strength of the army. So injurious, however, is Bengal proper to this class of natives, in 
comparison with the upper provinces, that, although only one-fourth of the troops exhibited 
are stationed in Bengal, the deaths of that fourth are more than a moiety of the whole 
mortality reported." 

Now, according to this statement, the native troops in the interior 
show a degree of healthfulness (1 death in 131) unknown to any 
troops in Europe; and even in Bengal, the mortality, as stated above, 
would only be about 16 to the 1000, or about 1 in 60 ! ! ! 

The most minute and reliable statistics we possess, touching the 
influence of tropical climates on the European races, are drawn from 
the reports of the British army surgeons, which give a truly melan- 
choly picture of the sacrifice of human life. ¥e shall use freely 
one of these reports, made by Major Tulloch, in 1840 — an abstract 
of which may be found in the April Wo. of the Medico-Chirurgical 
Review of that year. This report includes the stations of Western 
Africa, St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Mauritius. 
The following statement refers to Sierra Leone : 

" From a table furnished by Major Tulloch, it appears that, during so long a period as 
eighteen years, the admissions have averaged 2978, and the deaths 483 per thousand of 
the strength ; in other words, every soldier was thrice under medical treatment, and nearly 
half the force perished annually: indeed, in 1825, and again in 1820, when the mortality 
was at its height, three-fourths of the force was cut off. Yet this estimate excludes acci- 
dents, violence, &c. 

"A considerable portion of the deaths in 1825-6 took place at the Gambia, which proved 
the grave of almost every European sent there. Had the mortality of each station been 
kept distinct, that of the European troops at Sierra Leone would not probably have exceeded 
350 per thousand, or rather more than a third of the garrison, annually. 

"However much the vice and intemperance, not only of the troops, but the other classes 
of white population, may have aggravated the mortality, a more regulated life and purer 
morals brought no safety to them. For, among the Missionaries, we find that: 

Of 89 who arrived between March, 1804, and August, 1825, all men in the prime 

of life, there died 54 

Returned to England, in bad health 14 

" good health 7 

Remained on the coast 14 

Total 89" 

During the year 1825, about 300 white troops were landed at 
different times, and in detachments : nearly every one died, or was 
shattered in constitution; and, what is remarkable, "During the 
whole of this dreadful mortality, a detachment of from 40 to 50 black 
soldiers of the 2d West-India Regiment only lost one man, and had 
seldom any in the hospital." These black soldiers, too, had been born 
and brought up in the "West Indies ; and, according to the commonly 
received theory of acclimation, should not have enjoyed this exemp- 
tion. No length of residence acclimates the whites in Africa ; on 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 375 

the contrary, it exterminates them. The history of the whole coast 
is the same. 

The Major's report goes on to speak of the black troops, recruited 
from among the negroes captured from slavers, and liberated at 
Sierra Leone. It is remarkable that these black troops, recruited 
from native Africans, give a mortality, during eighteen years, of an 
average of 30 per 1000 — twice as high as the mortality of other 
troops serving in their native country. This rate of mortality is 
about the same as that of the black troops in Jamaica and Hondu- 
ras. * * * It is not, however, from fever (the disease of the climate) 
that the black soldier suffers. From this the attacks have been fewer, 
and the deaths have not materially exceeded the proportion among an 
equal number of white troops in the United Kingdom, or other tempe- 
rate climates. The black troops suffer much more from fever in the 
West Indies. Small-pox killed many, dracunculus, &c. 

The Cape Colony possesses a milder climate, is free from malarial 
influences ; and the troops, both white and native, enjoy remarkable 
exemption from disease and mortality. Fevers are rare and mild. 
The Hottentots, like other black races, show a strong tendency to 
phthisis — far greater than the white troops. 

The Mauritius, though in the same latitude as Jamaica, is more 
temperate, and far more salubrious. The British troops are as 
exempt from disease here as in Great Britain. This island has a 
population of about 90,000, two-thirds of whom are colored; and 
while the white population are remarkably healthy, both military 
and civil, the negroes die in as great a proportion as in the "West 
Indies, says Major Tulloch. A prolonged residence here, from heat 
of the climate, is unfavorable to longevity of whites. 

Seychelles. — "A group of small islands, in the Indian Ocean, between 4° and 5° south 
latitude. They are fifteen in number; but the principal one, named Mah<5, in which a 
detachment of British troops is stationed, is sixteen miles long, and from three to four 
broad, with a steep, rugged, granite mountain intersecting it longitudinally. The soil of 
Mahe 1 is principally a reddish clay, mixed with sand : and is watered by an abundance of 
small rivulets. The weather in these islands is described as being clear, dry, and extremely 
agreeable. There is little difference in the seasons, except during November, December, 
and January, when much rain falls, with occasional light squalls. The equality of the 
temperature may be inferred, when we state that the maximum of temperature throughout 
the year was 88°, and the minimum 73°. We cannot, therefore, be surprised when we are 
told that the total population of the principal islands in the group amounted, in 1825, to 
582 whites, 323 free people of color, and 6058 slaves — all of whom are said to enjoy 
remarkably good health, and an exemption from the languor and debility so much experi- 
enced in other tropical climates. Extreme longevity is very common ; and affections of the 
lunys almost the only disease, of a serious character, to which the inhabitants are subject." 

The British troops proved very sickly here; but Major Tulloch 
attributes this to bad diet and intemperance. 



376 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

The fact is so glaring, and so universally admitted, that I am 
really at a loss how to select evidence to show that there is no accli- 
mation against the endemic fevers of our rural districts. Is it not 
the constant theme of the population of the South, how they can 
preserve health ? and do not all prudent persons, who can afford to 
do so, remove in the summer to some salubrious locality, in the 
pine-lands or the mountains ? Those of the tenth generation are 
just as solicitous on the subject as those of the first. Books written 
at the North talk much about acclimation at the South ; but we here 
never hear it alluded to out of the yelloio-fever cities. On the con- 
trary, we know that those who live from generation to generation in 
malarial districts become thoroughly poisoned, and exhibit the 
thousand Protean forms of disease which spring from this insidious 
poison. 

I have been the examining physician to several life-insurance 
companies for many years, and one of the questions now asked in 
many of the policies is, "7s the party acclimated?" If the subject 
lives in one of our southern seaports, where yellow fever prevails, 
and has been born and reared- there, or has had an attack of yellow 
fever, I answer, "Yes." If, on the other hand, he lives in the coun- 
try, I answer, "No;" because there is no acclimation against inter- 
mittent and bilious fever, and other marsh diseases. Now, I ask if 
there is an experienced and observing physician at the South who 
will answer differently? An attack of yellow fever does not protect 
against marsh fevers, nor vice versd. 

The acclimation of negroes, even, according to my observation, 
has been put in too strong a light. Being originally natives of hot 
climates, they require no acclimation to temperature, are less liable 
to the more inflammatory forms of malarial fevers, and suffer infi- 
nitely less than whites from yellow fever : they never, however, as 
far as my observation extends, become proof against intermittents 
and their sequela?. The cotton planters throughout the South will 
bear witness, that, wherever the whites are attacked with intermit- 
tents, the blacks are also susceptible, though not in so great a 
degree. My observations apply to the region of country removed 
from the rice country. We shall see, further on, that the negroes 
of the rice-field region do undergo a higher degree of acclimation 
than those of the hilly lands of the interior. I know many planta- 
tions in the interior of Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Missis- 
sippi, and Louisiana, on which negroes of the second and third 
generation continue to suffer from these malarial diseases, and where 
gangs of negroes do not increase. 

Dr. Samuel Forry, in his valuable work on the climate of the 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 377 

United States, has investigated fully the influence of our southern 
climates on our population, and uses the following decided language 
in relation to the whites : 

" In these localities, as is often observed in the tide-water region of our Southern States, 
the human frame is weakly constituted, or imperfectly developed: the mortality among 
children is very great, and the mean duration of life is comparatively short. Along the 
frontiers of Florida and the southern borders of Georgia, as witnessed by the author, as 
well as in the low lands of the Southern States generally, may be seen deplorable examples 
of the physical, and perhaps mental, deterioration induced by endemic influences. In 
earliest infancy, the complexion becomes sallow, and the eye assumes a bilious tint : 
advancing towards the years of maturity, the growth is arrested, the limbs become atte- 
nuated, the viscera engorged, &c." — P. 365. 

But, leaving our own country, let us look abroad and see what the 
history of other nations teaches. 

The best-authenticated examples, perhaps, anywhere to be found 
on record, of the enduring influence of marsh malaria on a race, are 
in the Campagna, Maremma, Pontines, and other insalubrious locali- 
ties in classic Italy. The following account is given by Dr. James 
Johnson, in his work on Change of Air ; and every traveller through 
Italy can vouch for its fidelity : 

" It is from the mountain of Viterbo that we have the first glimpse of the wide-spread 
Campagna di Roma. The beautiful little lake of Vico lies under our feet, its sloping banks 
cultivated like a garden, but destitute of habitations, on account of the deadly malaria, 
which no culture can annihilate. From this spot, till we reach the desert, the features of 
poverty and wretchedness in the inhabitants themselves, as well as in everything around 
them, grow rapidly more marked. We descend from Monti Rose upon the Campagna, and, 
at Baccano, we are in the midst of it." 

After describing the beauty of the scenery, and its luxuriaut 
vegetation, he continues : 

" But no human form meets the eye, except the gaunt figure of the herdsman, muffled 
up to the chin in his dark mantle, with his gun and his spear ; his broad hat slouched over 
the ferocious and scowling countenance of a brigand : the buffalo which he guards is less 
repugnant than he. As for the shepherd, Arcadia forbid that I should attempt his descrip- 
tion! The savage of the wigwam has health to recommend him. As we approach within 
ten miles of Rome, some specks of cultivation appear, and with them the dire effects of 
malaria on the human frame. Bloated bellies, distorted features, dark yellow complexions, 
livid eyes and lips; in short, all the symptoms of dropsy, jaundice, and ague, united in 
their persons. That this deleterious miasma did exist in the Campagna from the very first 
foundation of Rome down to the present moment, there can be little doubt," 

He then goes on to prove the fact, from the writings of Cicero, 
Livy, and others ; and makes it clear that the population of Italy 
are no nearer being acclimated against this poison, than they were 
two thousand years ago. 

Sir James Johnson makes the following just remarks, which 
apply equally to the malarious districts of our country : 



378 acclimation; oe, the influence of 

"A glance at the inhabitants of malarious countries or districts, must convince even the 
most superficial observer, that the range of disorders produced by the poison of malaria is 
very extensive. The jaundiced complexion, the tumid abdomen, the stunted growth, the 
btupid countenance, the shortened life, attest that habitual exposure to malaria saps the 
energy of every mental and bodily function, and drags its victims to an early grave. A 
moment's reflection must show us, that fever and ague, two of the most prominent features 
of malarious influence, are as a drop of water in the ocean, when compared with the other 
less obtrusive, but more dangerous, maladies that silently, but effectually, disorganize the 
vital structures of the human fabric, under the operation of the deleterious and invisible 
poison. 

"What are the consequences? Malarious fevers; or, if these are escaped, the founda- 
tion of chronic malarious disorders is laid, in ample provision for future misery and suffer- 
ing. These are not speculations, but facts. Compare the range of human existence, as 
founded on the decrement of human life in Italy and England. In Rome, a twenty-fifth 
part of the population pays the debt of nature annually. In Naples, a twenty-eighth part 
dies. In London, only one in forty; and in England generally, only one in sixty falls 
before the scythe of time, or the ravages of disease." 

As is the case with all of our southern seaports, "the suburbs of 
Rome are more exposed to malaria than the city; and the open 
squares and streets, than the narrow lanes in the centre of the me- 
tropolis." " The low, crowded, and abominably filthy quarter of 
the Jews, on the banks of the Tiber, near the foot of the capital, 
probably owes its acknowledged freedom from the fatal malaria to 
its sheltered site and inconceivably dense population." This immu- 
nity may arise, at least in part, from their position at the foot of the 
hill ; for there is no exception to the rule, at the South, that a resi- 
dence on the bank of a river, or in low land, is less affected by 
malaria than the hill that overlooks it. At present, the fact is 
inexplicable, although universally admitted. 

We will here add some interesting facts, from the writings of the 
distinguished military physician, M. le Docteur Boudin, derived from 
personal observation, during long residence in Algeria, and from 
official government documents. 

"On the 81st of December, 1851, the indigenous city population (of Algeria) amounted 
to 105,865 inhabitants, of whom there were: 

Mussulmans 81,829 

Negroes 3,488 

Jews 21,048 

"If we compare this census with that of the year 1849, the following facts appear: 

"1. By a comparison of births and deaths in the official tables, the Mussulman popula- 
tion is decreasing. 

"2. The negroes have decreased, in two years, 689. 

" 3. The Jews, during the same time, have increased 2020. 

"The mortality among the European population, in Algeria, from 1842 to 1851, has 
varied from 44 to 105 out of every 1000; and, instead of diminishing from year to year, 
under acclimation, the mortality has steadily increased. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 379 

Mortality according to Nationality. 
" Heretofore we have given the mortality of the European population taken in mass. It 
is understood that this mortality must be greatly influenced by the origin of the different 
elements of the population. We have shown that the half of the European population- is 
composed of strangers (other than French), and numbers over 41,000 Spaniards, and 
15,000 Italians and Maltese. The official tables give the following mortality, from 1847 to 
1851, for the French and strangers (Spaniards, Italians, and Maltese) : 

Deaths for each 1000. 

Strangers. French. 

1847 48.4 50.8 

1848 41.8 41.7 

1849 84.3 101.5 

1850 43.4 70.5 

1851 39.3 64.5" 

Thus, on the one side, we see that the mortality of the French 
greatly exceeds that of the other European population ; while, on 
the other, in 1850 and 1851, the mortality of the former rises to a 
figure three times greater than the normal mortality of France. 

Jewish Population. 
The official tables give the following resume of the mortality of 
the Jewish population, during the years from 1844 to 1849 : 

1844 21.6 deaths per 1,000. 

1845 36.1 " 

1847 31.5 " 

1848 23.4 

1849 56.9 

This mortality is greatly below that of both the European and 
Mussulman population, and shows the difference of acclimation in 
Jews and Frenchmen : "Nulle part le Juif ne nait, ne vit, ne meurt, 
comme les autres hommes au milieu desquels il habite. C'est la un 
point d'anthropologie comparee que nous avons mis hors de contes- 
tation, dans plusieurs publications." 

"According to the last tables of the French establishments in 
Algeria, the total number of births, from 1830 to 1851, have been 
44,900, and that of the deaths 62,768" ! ! ! This fact applies to all 
the provinces, and shows that the climate tends to the extermination 
of Europeans. 

The official statistics also show that the Mussulman (Moorisb) 
population is steadily decreasing, in the cities. Dr. Boudin asks : 
" Is this diminution the effect of want, or of demoralization ? is it 
to be explained by the cessation of unions between the native women 
and the Turkish soldiers ? or, finally, is it explained by that myste- 
rious law, in virtue of which inferior races seem destined to disap- 
pear through contact with superior races ?' ■ 



380 acclimation; ok, the influence of 

As this subject of home acclimation is one of too much import- 
ance to be allowed to rest on the opinion of any one individual, I 
have taken the liberty of writing to several of my professional 
friends, for the results of their observations in different localities 
and States. All the answers received confirm fully my assertion, 
that the Anglo-Saxon race can never be acclimated against marsh 
malaria. I should remark, that the following letters were written 
with the haste of private correspondence, and not with the idea of 
publication. The first letter is from Dr. Dickson, the distinguished 
Professor of Practice in the Charleston Medical College. 

"Charleston, May 16, 1856. 

"My dear Doctor. — I hasten to reply to yours of the 9th inst., received by yesterday's 
mail. 

"1. 'The Anglo-Saxon race can never become acclimated against the impression of 
intermittent and bilious fevers, 'periodical,' or 'malarious fevers.' On the contrary, the 
people living in our low country grow more liable to attack year after year, and generation 
after generation. 

"We get rid of the poison in some places, and thus extend our limits of residence; but 
in no other way. Drainage, the formation of an artificial surface on the ground, and other 
incidents of density of population — such as culinary fires, railroad smokes, and the like, 
aid to prevent the formation of malaria, or correct it. 

"Boudin [British and Foreign Rev., Oct. 1849) argues against the possibility of such 
acclimation, dwelling upon the little success and great mortality attending the colonization 
of Algeria, the European and English intrusion into Egypt and into Hindostan. 

"The French, he tells us, cannot keep up their number in Corsica. In the West Indies, 
the white soldier is twice as likely to die as the black ; in Sierra Leone, sixteen times more 
likely ; and this continues permanently. 

" In Brtson's Reports on the Climate and Principal Diseases of the African Station, it is 
affirmed (p. 83) that, on board the Atholl (a vessel kept some time on the station), the cases 
of fever have recovered much more slowly than formerly ; so that, instead of its being an 
advantage to be acclimated, it is apprehended that it will be quite the reverse, as the system 
becomes relaxed and debilitated by the enervating influence of the climate. 

"'2. Do negroes in this country (rice-field) ever lose their susceptibility to those dis- 
eases V Yes, in very great measure, if not absolutely. If they remain in the same loca- 
lity, they are scarcely subjects of attack. I use cautious language — too cautious. It is 
my full belief that they become insusceptible of the impression of the cause of periodical, 
or what we call malarious, fevers. Who ever saw a negro with an ague-cake ? I certainly 
never did. Change of residence begets a certain but very moderate degree of susceptibi- 
lity. If a house negro be sent to a rice-field, he may be attacked. So, in shifting along 
the African coast from place to place, the natives of one locality will be seized by fever 
sometimes at another. Bryson tells us that Fernando Po is so terribly insalubrious, that 
negroes brought from any part of the African continent are always sickly there, ' though the 
natives of the island itself appear to be a healthy and athletic race of people.' 

" The same author tells us of the general insusceptibility of the particular race called 
Kroo-men, all along the coast. This class of people are therefore very useful and avail- 
able, being hired in preference to others on board the cruisers. 

"3. Negroes increase in number on our rice plantations; nay, it is my impression that 
the rate of increase is greater than on the less malarial cotton plantations. The majority 
of deaths that do occur, happen in winter and from winter diseases — few dying of fever, 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON" MAN. 381 

none or almost none from bilious, intermittents, or remittents, some from typhus or typhoid, 
or ' typhous' fever. 

******** 

"I remain, &c, 

" Samuel Henry Dickson." 

There is an interesting fact in the above letter to me, as I have no 
experience in the rice-field country. I allude to the acclimation of 
negroes in these flat swarnp-lands, and their increase. As far as my 
observation goes, the hilly, rich clay-lands of the interior are, with 
few exceptions, more liable to malarial fevers than the swamp-lands 
on the water-courses. The hills in the neighborhood of our swamp- 
lands are always more sickly than the residences which are on the 
river banks. Professor Dickson says that the rice-field negroes 
increase more than those on the cotton plantations. Certainly, 
negroes do suffer greatly on many cotton plantations in the middle 
belt of the Southern States ; and I have seen no evidence to prove 
that negroes can, in this region, become accustomed to the marsh 
poison ; and my observation has been extensive in four States. A 
question here arises: Is there any difference in types of those 
malarial fevers which originate in the flat tide-water rice-lands, and 
those of the clay-hills, or marsh fevers of the interior ? I am inclined 
to think there is. 

The following letter is from my friend Dr. ¥m. M. Boling, of 
Montgomery, Alabama, who has had much experience in this region, 
and who is well known as one of our best medical writers. 

" Montgomery, Ala., May 17, 1856. 
" Dear Doctor. — Judging from my own observation, I am inclined to believe that there 
is no such thing as acclimation to miasmatic localities ; in other words, that neither resi- 
dence in a miasmatic locality, nor an attack, nor even repeated attacks, of any of the 
various shades or forms of miasmatic fevers, confer any power of resistance to what we 
understand by the miasmatic poison — not regarding yellow fever, however, as belonging to 
this class of disease. On the contrary, one attack, it seems to me, instead of affording an 
immunity from, rather increases the tendency or predisposition to another. It would be no 
difficult matter, I think, to obtain histories of cases of persons born, and continuing to live, 
in miasmatic localities, who have been subject to repeated attacks of miasmatic fevers, 
occasionally, during the entire course of their lives — say from a few days after birth to a 
moderate old age — "from the cradle to the grave." We do, to be sure, meet with persons 
who have resided for a considerable time in miasmatic localities, without ever having had 
an attack of any of the forms of the fever in question. Such instances are more common, 
if I mistake not, among persons who have removed from a healthy into a miasmatic loca- 
lity, than among such as may have been born and reared in the latter. But it is a rare 
thing, indeed, according to my observation, to meet with a person, residing in a place 
where miasmatic diseases are rife, who has had one attack and no more. 

"Yours, &c, 

"Wm. M. Boling." 

It were an easy task to multiply evidence to the same effect ; but 
what has already been said should be sufficient to satisfy any think- 



382 acclimation; or, the influence of 

ing mind. 19 "We shall, therefore, leave this point, and turn hack 
again to the Report of Major Tulloch, where we find some interest- 
ing facts, respecting the negro race, in the Mauritius, which will not 
bear curtailment. 

Black Pioneers. — "These military laborers have been enlisted for the purpose of relieving 
the European soldiers from the performance of fatigue and other duties, which subjected 
them to much exposure. They are all negroes, who have either been born in the Mauritius, 
or brought from Madagascar and Mozambique, on the eastern coast of Africa. They are 
described as being a more robust and athletic race than those composing the West India 
regiments. 

"A table exhibits the admissions into hospital and deaths among these troops since 1825. 
As regards both, the ratio is almost exactly the same as among the black troops and pioneers 
in the Windward and Leeward command : the former being as 839 to 820, and the latter as 
87 to 40 per 1000, of mean strength annually; so that the Mauritius and West Indies seem- 
alike unsuitcd to the constitution of the negro. This shows how vain is the expectation, even 
under the most favorable circumstances, of that race ever keeping up or perpetuating their 
number in either of these colonies, when men in the prime of life, selected for their strength 
and capability for labor, subject to no physical defect at enlistment, and secured by military 
regulations from all harsh treatment, die nearly four times as rapidly as the aboriginal inha- 
bitants of the Cape, or other healthy countries, at the same age ; and at least thrice as rapidly as 
the while population of the Mauritius. Indeed, so fast is the negro race decreasing there, that, 
in five years, the deaths have exceeded the births by upwards of 6000, in a population of 60,000. 

"However difficult it may be to assign an efficient cause, it is certain that the inhabitants 
of different countries have different susceptibilities for particular diseases. Fevers, for 
instance, have little influence on the negro race, in the Mauritius ; for no death has occurred 
from them, and the admissions have been in much the same proportion as among an equal 
number of persons in the United Kingdom ; but here, as in all other colonies in which we 
have been able to trace the fatal diseases of the negro, the great source of mortality has 
been that of the lungs ; indeed, more die trom that class alone, than of Hottentot troops, 
at the Cape, from all diseases together ; but the latter are serving in their natural climate, 
the former in one to which their constitution has never adapted, and probably never will 
adapt itself. 

"Major Tulloch compares the mortality of the negro, from diseases of the lunge, in 
various colonies. There died annually of these affections, per 1000 of mean strength — 

West coast of Africa 6.3 

Honduras 8.1 

Bahamas 9.7 

Jamaica 10.3 

Mauritius 12.9 

Windward and Leeward Command 16.5 

Gibraltar 33.5 

"Thus, in his native country, the negro appears to suffer from these diseases in much 
the same proportion as British troops in their native country ; but, so soon as he goes 
beyond it, the mortality increases, till, in some colonies, it attains to such a height as 
seemingly to preclude the possibility of his race ever forming a healthy or increasing 
population. 

" It is in vain that we look for the cause of this remarkable difference, either in tempe- 

19 See the distinction between "bilious and yellow fever," in the Essay by Prof. Kichard 
D. Arnold, M. D., of Savannah, read before the Medical Society of the State of Georgia, 
Augusta, Ga., 1856. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 383 

rature, moisture, or any of those appreciable atmospheric agencies by which the human 
frame is likely to be affected in some climates more than others ; and it is consequently 
impossible, from any other data than that which the experience of medical records fur- 
nishes, to say where this class of troops can be employed with advantage. Nearly two- 
thirds of the mortality from diseases of the lungs, among negroes, arises from pulmonary 
consumption ; and it is worthy of remark, as showing how little that disease affects the 
natives of some tropical climates, though it proves so fatal to those of others, that, among 
71,850 native troops serving in the Madras Presidency, the deaths by every description of 
disease of the lungs, did not, on the average of five years, exceed 1 per 1000 of the strength 
annually." 

In the " Journal of the Statistical Society of London," will be found 
another exceedingly interesting paper by the same writer, now 
Lieut-Colonel Tulloch, F. S.S., in continuation of the same subject, 
and giving later statistics. 20 He says : 

"The preceding tables apply entirely to European troops serving abroad. It may now 
prove interesting to extend a similar course of observations to the influence of the same 
climates on the mortality of native or black troops, during the same periods. Of these, I 
shall first advert to the Malta Fencibles, composed of persons born in the island. 

"The strength of this corps, and the deaths antecedent to the 31st March, 1846, were as 
follows : 

STRENGTH. DEATHS. 

Year ending 31st March, 1845 575 5 

" 1846 574 5 

being at the rate of 8^ per thousand, on the average of these two years ; while the average 
from 1825, when this corps was raised, till 1836, a period of eleven years, was 9 per 1000 
annually. Thus, this corps proved one of the healthiest in the service; and, as in the case 
of other troops serving in the colonies, its health and efficiency seem to be on the increase. 
" The Cape corps, composed of Hottentots, shows, however, a still lower degree of mor- 
tality during the same period : the strength and deaths for these two years having been 
respectively as follows : 

STRENGTH. DEATHS. 

Tear ending 31st March, 1845 420 3 

1846 448 3 

Average of these two years 434 3 

being at the rate of 7 per 1000 annually; while the mortality in the same corps, on the 
average of the thirteen years antecedent to 1836, was 12 per 1000 annually — thus showing 
a great reduction of late years. 

"The ratio of mortality in both those corps has been much below what is usual, even 
among the most select lives in this country (England) ; and shows the great advantage, 
wherever it is practicable, of employing the native inhabitants of our colonies, as a defen- 
sive force, in preference to regular troops sent from this country. 

"On comparing the diet and habits of men composing these two corps (which exhibit so 
low a degree of mortality during a long series of years), they will be found diametrically 
opposite: the Maltese soldier living principally on vegetable diet, and rarely indulging in 
the use of fermented or spirituous liquors, while the Hottentot soldier, like others of his 
race, lives principally on animal food, and that of the coarsest description. Owing to the 
want of rain and the uncertainty of the crops, grain is often very scarce on the eastern 

20 Lieut. -Col. A. M. Tulloch, F. S. S., " On the Mortality among Her Majesty's troops 
serving in the Colonies during the years 1844—5." Read before the Statistical Society, Jan. 
21, 1847. 



384 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

frontier of the Cape, where this class of troops is principally employed ; and they are 
occasionally -without vegetable or farinaceous food for several weeks, at which times they 
often consume from two to three pounds of meat daily ; and their usual meat-ration is at 
all times as great as that of the European soldier. Intoxication, with ardent and fermented 
spirits, or by smoking large quantities of a coarse description of hemp, is also by no means 
uncommon among them ; yet has this corps proved as healthy as the Maltese Fencibles, and 
still more so than the native army of the East Indies, whoso comparative exemption from 
disease has by some been attributed to the simplicity of their diet, and their general 
abstinence from every species of intoxication. Facts like these show with what caution 
deductions should be drawn, when the returns of only one class of men are before us; and 
how necessary it is in this, as in every other species of statistical inquiry, to extend the 
sphere of observation, with a view to accurate results. 

"I shall next advert to a class of troops who, though born within the Tropics, and 
serving in tropical colonies, are not natives of the climate in which they are stationed. 
First of these, in number and importance, are the three West India corps, recruited prin- 
cipally from negroes captured in slave-ships, or inhabitants of the west coast of Africa. 
These men are distributed throughout Jamaica and the West India islands ; and take the 
duty of those stations which long experience has shown to be inimical to the health of 
Europeans. 

" The strength and mortality of this class, for the same two years as were before referrod 
to, have been as follows: 

Jamaica. 

STRENGTH. DEATHS. 

Tear ending 31st March, 1845 770 17 

1846 912 36 

Average of these two years 841 26J 

West Indies. 

STRENGTH. DEATHS. 

Tear ending 31st March, 1845 994 23 

" 1846 1175 32 

Average of these two years , 1084 27£ 

" These troops being frequently removed from island to island, there would be no utility 
in stating the separate mortality in each, as, in most instances, the calculation would 
involve broken periods of a year; but, on the whole, it appears that, in Jamaica, the mor- 
tality has been at the rate of about 31, and in the West Indies 26 per 1000 of the force 
annually ; while the mortality of the same class of troops, at the same stations, during the 
twenty years antecedent to 1836, was respectively 30 per 1000 in Jamaica, and 40 per 1000 
in the West Indies — thus showing a marked reduction in the mortality at the latter, during 
the last two years. 

"On referring to the preceding results, a very material difference will be found between 
the mortality of this class of troops, and that of the Cape corps and Maltese Fencibles, 
who are serving in their native climate : the former being nearly four times as high as 
either of the latter. Though the climate of the West Indies is probably as warm as that 
of the interior of Africa" [in which the author is mistaken], "whence the negroes are 
generally drawn, yet their constitutions never have, and probably never will, become assi- 
milated to it. The high rate of mortality among them can, in no respect, be attributed 
either to the habits or the duties of the negro soldier ; for others of the same race, who 
are not in the army, suffer in a corresponding proportion" [as we shall take occasion to 
show, on a large scale. — J. C. N] 

"By a very extensive investigation, into which I entered when engaged in the prepara- 
tion of the West-India Statistical Report, about seven years ago" [already referred to], "I 
found that the mortality among the negro slave-population, even including families who 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 385 

had been for several generations in these colonies, amounted to about 30 per 1000 annually, 
of all ages. Very little of this mortality occurred among infant life : it fell principally on 
persons of mature age ; among which class it was nearly double the proportion usually 
observed among the civil population in this country. That, under such a mortality, the 
negro race can ever increase, or even keep up their numbers, in the West Indies, appears a 
physical impossibility; and there is good reason to believe, that the want of labor, so much 
complained of, and the demand for immigration from other countries, so much insisted on, 
arises more from the waste of life, than from the increasing cultivation of the soil ; and 
that a careful investigation into the mortality of the negro population, at different ages, 
would show that the period is not far distant, at which that race would become entirely 
extinct in the West Indies, but for the occasional accession to their numbers by fresh 
importations. 

"The results on which these observations, as to the mortality of the negro population, 
were founded, extended, it is true, over a period when slavery prevailed in the island ; 21 and 
it would be interesting to those philanthropists who then attributed the high rate of mor- 
tality to that cause, now to trace, from the returns of each island, whether any diminution 
has taken place since freedom was established among our sable brethren ; but when it is 
shown, by these results, that negro soldiers, in the prime of life, with every advantage, in 
point of income, clothing, comfort, and medical attendance, which the British soldier enjoys 
— with precisely the same diet (if that can be considered an advantage), and with much 
greater regularity of habits than he can boast of, are subject to an annual mortality of from 
2J to 3J per cent., there is little reason to hope that, whether bond or free, the negro race 
will ever thrive or increase in the West Indies. 

"The same remarks, as regards the unsuitableness of the climate, will, in a great mea- 
sure, apply to the next class of troops to which I have to advert, viz., the Ceylon Rifle 
Regiment, composed of Malays, brought principally from the Straits of Malacca, for the 
purpose of serving in Ceylon ; where the climate, though equally warm, does not appear by 
any means congenial to their constitution, as must be apparent from the following results 
regarding the mortality : 

STRENGTH. DEATHS. 

Year ending 31st March, 1845 1952 46 

" 1846 1930 36 

Average of these two years 1941 41 

making an annual mortality of 21 per 1000 ; while the ratio among the same class of troops, 
for the twenty years antecedent to 1836, was 27 per 1000 annually. 

" Though this mortality is considerably lower than that of the negro troop3 in the West 
Indies, it is nearly twice as high as that which occurs among the native troops serving on 
the continent of India adjacent — a sufficient proof that the Malay race is never likely to 
become assimilated to the climate of Ceylon; indeed, it has long been a subject of remark, 
that, though their children have been encouraged to enter the service at a very early age, 
in order to recruit the force, that expedient has proved insufficient, without the constant 
importation of recruits from the Malay coast. 

" The mortality among this class of troops, as among every other to which I have adverted, 
has undergone a considerable reduction within the last two years, as compared with the 
twenty years antecedent to 1836 — owing, no doubt, to late improvements and ameliorations 
in the condition of the soldier ; but there is little hope, either in the case of the Malay or 
the negro, that this reduction will be sufficiently progressive to hold out a reasonable pros- 
pect of these races becoming thoroughly assimilated to the climate of Ceylon, in the one 
case, or the West Indies, in the other. 

21 It will be made to appear, further on, that slavery has nothing to do with this result. 
On the contrary, emancipation invariably (in America) has increased the ratio of mortality. 

25 



386 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

" To ascertain the races of men best fitted to inhabit and develop the resources of 
different colonies, is a most important inquiry, and one -which has hitherto attracted too 
little attention, both in this and other countries. Had the government of France, for 
instance, adverted to the absolute impossibility of any population increasing or keeping up 
its numbers under an annual mortality of 7 per cent, (being that to which their settlers are 
exposed in Algiers), it would never have entered on the wild speculation of cultivating the 
soil of Africa by Europeans, nor have wasted one hundred millions sterling, with no other 
result than the loss of 100,000 men, who have fallen victims to the climate of that country. 
In snch questions, military returns, properly organized and properly digested, afford one 
of the most useful guides to direct the policy of the colonial legislation : they point out the 
limits intended by nature for particular races ; and within which alone they can thrive and 
increase. They serve to indicate, to the restless wanderers of our race, the boundaries 
which neither the pursuit of wealth nor the dreams' of ambition should induce them to 
pass ; and proclaim, in forcible language, that man, like the elements, is controlled by a 
Power which hath said : ' Hither shalt thou come, but no further.' " 

We have thus gone through with the statistics of Colonel Tulloeh, 
which are remarkable for their fulness and the unprejudiced tone in 
which they are given. They would seem to show, veiy strongly, 
that certain races cannot become assimilated to certain climates, 
though they may to other climates far removed from their original 
birth-place. The British soldiers and civilians enjoy even better 
health at the Cape Colony than in Great Britain ; while the negro, 
in most regions out of Africa, whether within the Tropics — as in 
the Antilles, or out of them — as at Gibraltar, is gradually exter- 
minated. We shall now turn our attention to statistics which 
confirm, in a remarkable manner, the conclusions of Col. Tulloeh, 
respecting the influence of foreign tropical climates on negroes; and, 
on the other hand, exhibit an increase, in the same class of popula- 
tion, in the United States, almost without a parallel, and certainly 
unprecedented in any laboring class, taken separately; for the 
negroes in this country are almost exclusively of that denomi- 
nation. 

The following extract is taken from page 83 of the " Compendium 
of the seventh Census" of the United States, by the able superinten- 
dent, J. B. D. DeBow, Esq. 

"Slavery, which had existed in all the nations of antiquity, and throughout Europe 
during the Middle Ages, was introduced at an early day into the Colonies. The first 
introduction of African slaves was in 1620, by a Dutch vessel from Africa to Virginia. Mr. 
Carey, of Pennsylvania, in his work upon the slave-trade, says : ' The trade in slaves, to 
the American colonies, was too small, before 1753, to attract attention.' In that year, 
Macpherson (Annals of Commerce) says 511 were imported into Charleston; and, in 1765-6, 
the number of those imported into Georgia (from their valuation) could not have exceeded 
1482. From 1783 to 1787, the British West Indies exported to the Colonies 1392 — nearly 
300 per annum. These West Indies were then the entrepot of the trade; and though they 
received nearly 20,000 (Macpherson) in the period above-named, they sent to the Colonies 
but that small number — proving the demand could not have been very large. After a close 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 387 

argument, from the ratio of increase since the first census, Mb. Caret is enabled to recur 
back, and compute the population at earlier periods, separating the native-born from those 
derived from importations. Setting out with the fact that the slaves (blacks) numbered 
55,850 in 1714, he finds that 30,000 of these were brought from Africa. 

Importations previous to 1715 30,000 

between 1715 and 1750 90,000 

" " 1751 " 1760 35,000 

" " 1761 " 1770 74,000 

" " 1771 " 1790 34,000 

» " 1790 " 1808 70,000 



Total number imported 333,000 

"The number since 1790 is evidently too small. Charleston alone, in the four years, 
1804-5-6-7, imported 39,075. Making, therefore, a correction for such under-estimate, 
and a very liberal increase to Mk. Caret's figures, the whole number of Africans, at all 
times, imported into the United States, would not exceed 375,000 to 400,000. 

" ' Thus, in the United States, the number of Africans and their descendants is nearly 
eight or ten to one of those who were imported ; whikt, in the British West Indies, there are 
not two persons remaining, for every five of the imported and their descendants. This is seen 
from the following: Imported into Jamaica previously to 1817, 700,000 negroes — of whom 
and their descendants but 311,000 remained, after 178 years, to be emancipated in 1833. 
In the whole British West Indies, imported 1,700,000 — of whom and their descendants 
660,000 remained for emancipation.' — Caret." 22 

Here, then, we have reliahle statistics, establishing the astounding 
facts, that while the blacks in the United States have increased ten- 
fold, those of the British West Indies have decreased in the propor- 
tion of five to two. Of the whole 1,700,000 and their progeny, but 
660,000 remained at the time of emancipation. I have not the data 
at hand to speak with precision ; but the fact is notorious, that the 
diminution in the number of blacks, in the British West Indies, has 
been going on more rapidly since than before their emancipation. 
To what causes is all this to be attributed ? This is a difficult ques- 
tion, at present, to answer. Certainly, no one will contend that the 
subjects of Great Britain were less humane to their slaves than those 
of the United States ; or that the negroes in the British West Indies 
were not in as good a physical condition, in former years, as those 
of the United States. 23 Climate, then, with the present lights before 
us, seems to have been the leading cause. There is another, which 
I have not seen alluded to in these statistics ; and which may or 

22 At the time I am writing, the colored population, slave and free, in the United States, 
must be at least ten to one greater than the importations. This population, in 1850, 
amounted to 3,638,808; and, at the present moment, October, 1856, exceeds 4,000,000. 

23 The condition, both moral and physical, has been steadily improving, in the United 
States; and is now much better than that of slaves half a century ago, either here or in 
the West Indies. [See ample corroborations of present free-negro mortality, at Jamaica, 
in the " Memorial of the West Indian merchants and others to Mr. Labouchere," just pub- 
lished (London Post, Dec. 26, 1856).— G. R. G.] 



388 acclimation; or, the influence of 

may not have its weight, viz., the mixture of races and the law of 
hybridity. That the mulattoes have a tendency towards extermina- 
tion, is believed by many ; but whether the white and black races 
have been mingled in a greater proportion in the British West 
Indies than in the United States, I have no means now of deter- 
mining. 

The actual ratio of mortality in the slave-population of the United 
States, I do not think can be arrived at, with certainty, from any 
statistics yet published. The census of the United States, published 
by the Government, is perfectly reliable in respect to the actual 
number of negroes at each decennial period, and the rate of increase 
in this population ; but, I am satisfied that the ratio of mortality, 
taken from the same volume, should be received with great caution, 
because I have reason to believe that the planters, from negligence, 
are greatly wanting in " accuracy on this point. The average mor- 
tality, for the whole slave-population, is put down in the census at 
one in sixty. This sounds as though it were below the mark ; but, 
when we reflect on the rapid increase of this population, it may not 
be so. We have positive data for the mortality of the free negroes 
in Northern States, where the climate, as well as social condition, is 
unfavorable to this class ; and the ratio is from one death in twenty, 
to one in thirty annually, of the entire number. In Boston, the 
most northern point, the mortality is highest; and rather less in 
New York and Philadelphia. I can procure no statistics from 
Canada, where the blacks must suffer terribly from that climate. 



"The blacks imported from Africa, everywhere beyond the limits of the Slave States of 
North America, tend to extinction. The Liberian experiment, the most favorable ever 
made, is no exception to this general tendency. According to the Report of the Coloniza- 
tion Society, for thirty-two years, ending in 1852, the number of colored persons sent to 
Liberia amounted to 7592 — of which number only 6000 or 7000 remained. The slave-holding 
States sent out as immigrants 6792 — the most of whom were emancipated slaves : the non- 
slave-holding States sent out 457 persons. 

"The black race is doomed to extinction in the West Indies, as well as in the Northern 
States of this republic, if the past be a true index of the future, unless the deterioration 
nnd waste of life shall be continually supplied by importations from Africa, or by fugitive 
and manumitted slaves from Southern States. 

" M. Humboldt (Personal Narrative) has, with his usual accuracy, compiled, from official 
sources, the vital statistics of the West India slaves, to near the close of the first quarter 
of the present century (one decenuium before the abolition act of Parliament). He esti- 
mates the slaves in these islands at 1,090,000; free negroes, including Ilayti, at 870,000; 
total, 1,960,000. Mr. Macgeegoe, in his huge volumes on the progress of America, gives 
the total aggregate of blacks at 1,300,000 in the year 1847 — showing a decline, in the 
preceding quarter of a century, of 660,000. 

"M. Humboldt says that 'the slaves would have diminished, since 1820, with great 
rapidity, but for the fraudulent continuation of the slave-trade.' 

" By another calculation, it appears that, in the whole West-Indian archipelago, the free 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 389 

colored numbered 1,212,900; the slaves, 1,147,500; total, 2,360,500— showing a decline, 
in less than five years, of 400,500, notwithstanding the accession by the slave-trade. * * * 
" M. Humboldt says : ' The whole archipelago of the West Indies, which now comprises 
2,400,000 negroes and mulattoes, free and slaves, received, from 1670 to 1825, nearly 
5,000,000 Africans.' 

These extracts are taken from an article by Dr. Bennet Dowler, 
editor of the "New Orleans Medical Journal" (Sept. 1856), wherein 
a great many other interesting facts will be found, from the writings 
of Turnbull, Long, Porter, and Tucker, as well as from his own 
observations. We commend this article strongly to the attention 
of the reader. 

We however, fortunately, have some statistics which are perfectly 
reliable, at the South ; and which will afford important light on the 
value of life among the blacks. We allude to those of the city of 
Charleston, South Carolina. 

By the United States' census of 1850, the entire population of 
Charleston, white and colored, was 42,985 — of which 20,012 were 
white ; 19,532 slaves ; free colored, 3441 ; total colored, 22,793. 

Some years ago, in several articles in the "Charleston Medical 
Journal," and the "ISTew Orleans Commercial Review," I worked up 
the vital statistics of Charleston, from 1828 to 1845, in connection 
with the subject of life-assurance. The ratio of mortality among 
the blacks, for those eighteen years, gave an average of deaths per 
annum of 1 in 42 ; and that ratio of mortality was much increased 
by a severe epidemic of cholera, in 1836, which bore almost exclu- 
sively on the colored population. 

We now propose to commence where we left off; and to give the 
statistics published by the city authorities, which have been kept 
with great fidelity, as we have good reason to know. These tables, 
for ten years, extend from 1846 to 1855, both inclusive ; and the 
census of population being taken only in the year 1850, we must 
make this the basis of calculation. As this year is about the middle 
one of the ten above referred to, the population of this year may be 
assumed as the average of the whole; and if the whole number 
of colored population, of 1850, be divided by the average number 
of the deaths from 1846 to 1855, it will give the average mortality 
for the ten years, and the result must approximate very nearly to the 
truth. 

[The New York Herald (Jan. 20, 1857) republishes, from the London News (Dec. 30), a 
"Curious History of the Liberian Republic," confirmatory of the ethnological opinions 
expressed by us in Types of Mankind (pp. 403-4, 455-6), concerning the absolute unfitness 
of negro-populations for self-government. The News pledges itself, moreover, to bring out 
a Liberian document, containing "a painful disclosure of a state of vice and misery (at 
Monrovia), which it might make the kind-hearted old Madison turn in his grave to have 
countenanced or helped to create." — G. R. G.] 



390 ACCLIMATION; OR THE INFLUENCE OF 



TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF DEATHS, FOR EACH YEAR, AMONG THE 
COLORED POPULATION OF CHARLESTON, WITH SOME OF THE CAUSES OF 
DEATH, AND THEIR LONGEVITY. 



TEAR. 


5 

"co 
e 
P 

o 
d 


Diiirrhosa, Dy- 
sentery, and 
Enteritis. 


.■Ktf 

M 

|8j 


3 

ft 
If 


U 

m 
> 
to 
fH 

It 

o 


a a 

«ii 

ill 


cm a 

O _o 
D ^ 

S.a 

o ce- 
rt 


AGES. 


"sIm 

IS — 


ft 

d 

CO 

>> 

o 
en 
o 
o 


© 

3 

o 

a> 


Cm 
O 

12 <= 

«S 
O. 
P 


1846 


349 


14 


4 


3 




34 


68 


15 


9 


2 




1847 


330 


1 


4 


5 




32 


70 


21 


6 


2 




1848 


310 


3 


3 


6 




25 


56 


25 


5 


2 




1849 


369- 


17 


7 


10 


i 


29 


75 


20 


9 


4 


124 


1850 


482 


7 


3 


12 




40 


91 


23 


6 


1 




1851 


533 


33 


3 


13 




44 


118 


26 


10 


10 




]852 


721 
688 


30 
20 


13 
3 


30 

18 


i 


54 

53 


138 
138 


39 

25 


13 
12 


7 
3 


309 


1853 


1854 


756 


42 


5 


14 


15 


55 


140 


40 


13 


4 


612 


1855 


686 


41 


4 


10 


... 


56 


118 


34 


18 


3 





Among the causes of death, we have selected only those which 
belong particularly to the climate, and those which press most on 
the blacks. It appears that very few died from bowel complaints or 
marsh fevers ; nor do the whites here suffer much more from any of 
these, except yellow fever. Fifteen of the colored people died one 
year from yellow fever ; but, doubtless, they were mostly mulattoes. 

A good many die from marasmus — most of which cases are 
scrofula ; but the term is often used without a veiy definite mean- 
ing ; and we have, therefore, not put it in the above table. Trismus 
nascentium and tetanus form a veiy large item — an average of 42 
per annum ; being about 7 to 1, compared to the whites. The great- 
est outlet of life will be found in the organs of respiration. The 
ratio of these, to deaths from all causes, is, among the colored popu- 
lation, 19.3 per cent.; and, among the whites, the deaths from dis- 
eases of the respiratory organs give a ratio of 17.8 per cent. It 
should be remarked, that the mortality from this class of diseases, 
among whites, in the tables of Charleston, is really greater than it 
should be ; for many persons come from the North to Charleston, 
to remain either permanently or for a short time, on account of weak 
lungs or actual phthisis, and die there — thus giving a percentage of 
deaths, from this cause, larger than would be accounted for by local 
causes. The colored population, on the contrary, is a native and 
fixed class. This colored population, too, suffers more than the 
whites from typhus and all epidemic diseases, except yellow fever. 

But one of the most remarkable features in this table, is the great 
longevity of the blacks. While the whites, in a nearly equal aggre- 
gate of population, give but 15 deaths between 90 and 100, and but 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES GN IAN. 391 

1 death above 100 years, the blacks, for the same period of ten 
years, give 101 deaths between 90 and 100 years of age, and 38 
deaths over 100 years ! 

There have been many disputes about the comparative longevity 
of races ; but all the statistics of our Southern States would seem to 
prove, that the negroes are the longest-lived race in the world ; and 
if a longevity of any other race can be shown, equal to the blacks 
of Charleston^ we have been unable to find the statistics. 

On a review of the tables of mortality from Charleston, it will be 
seen that the average mortality of the colored population, for the 
last ten years, is 1 in 43.6 — about the same ratio as the eighteen 
previous years. "When it is remembered that this is exclusively a 
laboring class, and including a considerable proportion of free 
colored population, it cannot but excite our wonder. It proves two 
points : 1. That the black races assimilate readily to our climate ; 2. 
That they are here in a more favorable condition than any laboring 
class in the world. It should, perhaps, be remarked, that, in a warm 
climate, a pauper population and laboring class do not suffer from 
the want of protection against cold and its diseases ; which, at the 
North, cause, among these classes, a large proportion of their mor- 
tality. Even in the sickliest parts of our Southern States, there are 
more examples of longevity, among the whites, than are seen in cold 
climates ; for the reason, I presume, that the feebleness of age offers 
little resistance to the rigor of northern climates. This, however, 
does not prove that the average duration of life is greater South 
than North. 34 

We have, thus far, called attention almost exclusively to two 
extremes of the human family, viz., the white and black races j and, 
except incidentally, have said little about the intermediate races, and 
the influence of the climate and diseases of America upon them. 
We now propose to take a glance at these points ; and must express 
our regret, at the outset, that our statistics and other means of in- 
formation here become much less satisfactory. We are not, how- 
ever, wanting in facts to show, that the element of race here, as 
elsewhere, plays a conspicuous part. We have already alluded to 
the fact, that the negroes are almost entirely exempt froni the 
influence of yellow fever; and, at one time, supposed that the 
susceptibility to this disease was nearly in direct ratio to the fairness 
of complexion ; but this idea, as we shall see, requires modification. 

24 If the city of Charleston gives so low a rate of mortality as 1 in 43.6 for the blacks 
and mulattoes, it is presumable that the rural districts throughout the South will give a 
much lower rate than in towns. Negroes surfer much less from consumption in the country 
than in towns. 



392 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

It is perfectly true, as respects the mixed progeny of the blacks 
and whites; for it is admitted everywhere, at the South, that the 
susceptibility of this class is in direct ratio to the infusion of white 
blood ; but the American Indians of the table-lands, as the Mexi- 
cans, and the mixed bloods of Sjmniards and Mexicans, are infinitely 
more liable to yellow fever, than mulattoes of any grade. This law 
of color would seem to apply to African and Asiatic races, but not 
to the aboriginal races of America. 

The following extract, from a document of the highest authority, 
will, I am sure, be read with peculiar interest, in this connection. 25 

"Of all protections, that of complexion was paramount. When the ships' crews "were 
disabled by sickness (and that was in the majority of instances), their places were supplied 
by negro sailors and laborers. On board many vessels, black labor alone was to be seen 
employed : yet, among these laborers and stevedores, a case of yellow fever was never seen. 
If to the table of thirteen months' admissions to the hospital, already given, be added a 
classified census of the population of the colony, information is given which enables us to 
arrive at something like precise knowledge on this subject. (See table, infra, page 394.) 

" From this table, it would appear that the liability of the white races to yellow fever, aa 
compared with the dark, is as 13.19 per cent, to -00004. But this would be rather an over- 
estimate of the risks of the whites ; for, although the calculation is correct for one day, it 
is not for the whole thirteen months. During the year 1852, 7670 seamen, the crews of 
vessels, arrived at the port of Georgetown. If we add one-twelfth to this sum, it will make 
a total of 8309, estimated all as white, who, for a longer or shorter period, were exposed to 
the endemic influence. This number should be added to that of the white population 
exposed, and the percentage of liability will be as follows: whites, 8'436; darks, '00004. 
This computation is irrespective of the effects of residence on the constitution. But the 
numbers afforded by the census returns are sufficiently great and detailed to authorize a 
purer and more ultimate analysis of the effects of complexion, or, in other words, cutaneous 
organization, on the liability to yellow fever among the population of the colony. We find 
that, of 7890 African (black) immigrants, none contracted yellow fever. 

" Of 9278 West India islanders (black and mulatto), 15, or -16 per cent, contracted yellow 
fever; of 10,978 Madras and Calcutta coolies (black, but fine-haired), 42, or -38 per cent, 
contracted yellow fever; 10,291 Portuguese immigrants (white), 698, or 6-2 per cent, 
contracted yellow fever. 

" From the foregoing, the importance of the skin, or that constitution of the body which 
is associated with varieties of the dermal covering, in the etiology of yellow fever, is at 
once apparent." 

The proportion of white to the dark races, according to our author, 
was 14,726 to 127,276 ; while the admissions to the public hospitals, 
for yellow fever, were 1947 of the former to 59 of the latter. He 
puts down the Portuguese as whites — whereas, they are by no means 
a fair-skinned race, compared with the Anglo-Saxons and other 
white races ; and their mortality corresponded with their complexion : 
it was intermediate between the two extremes. 

23 Daniel Blair, M. D., Surgeon-General of British Guiana, Report on the first eighteen 
months of the fourth Yellow Fever Epidemic of the British Guiana. See British and Foreign 
lied. Chir. Rev., January and April Nos., 1855. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 393 

Dr. J. Mendizabel writes me: "The coolies are, in this place 
(Vera Cruz), as well as in the West Indies, exempt from yellow 
fever." 

From all the information we are able to procure, it seems clear 
that the Chinese, in Cuba, are much less liable to fever than Euro- 
peans ; but there are no statistics on this point which will enable us 
to deal in figures. 

The same difficulty exists with regard to statistics for the Mexican 
races ; but it is certainty the impression of the best-informed physi- 
cians in that country, with whom we have corresponded, that the 
pure-blooded'Mexicans suffer more from yellow fever than either the 
pure-blood Spaniards, or the mixed bloods. It is asserted, also, that 
the cross-breeds of negroes and Mexicans are liable to this disease 
just in proportion to the blood of the latter race — as is the case with 
the cross-breeds of whites and negroes. 

Yellow fever, with perhaps few exceptions, has a preference for 
the races of men in proportion to the lightness of complexion — 
showing its greatest affinity for the pure white, and least for the jet 
black. 26 It is remarkable that the plague prefers the reverse course 
— as the following extract, from the best of all authorities on the 
subject, will prove. 

" The plague, in Egypt, attacks the different races of men ; but all are not equally 
susceptible. Thus, in all (he epidemics, the negro race suffers most ; after these, the 
Berbers or Nubians; then the Arabs of Hedjaz and Yemen; then the Europeans; and, 
among these, especially the Maltese, Greeks, and Turks, and generally the inhabitants of 
South Europe" ! " 

A reference to Dr. De la Roches' ample statistics of mortality 
from yellow fever, will show, beyond dispute, that, of the number 
attacked, the highest ratio of mortality is almost invariably among 
the pure white races — as the Germans, Anglo-Saxons, &c. This has 
been accounted for by the fact, that they come from cold latitudes ; 
and it bas grown into an axiom, that the further north the race, the 
more liable it is to yellow fever. Now, it is easily shown that this 
position is not tenable : the contrary is proven, by observations on 
the Mexican races. There is scarcely any part of the country of 
Mexico, which is, to any extent, populated, that can be called cold ; 
and yet the Mexicans from the table-lands are, perhaps, little less 
liable to yellow fever than Germans ; and their own writers assert 
that they are quite as much so. 

26 As far as we can obtain facts, the dark European, Asiatic, and African races, all show 
less susceptibility to yellow fever than the strictly white; and the red man of America, if 
an exception, we believe is the only one. It is as vain to attempt to explain his suscepti- 
bility, as it is the exemption of negroes and mulattoes: it is a physiological law of race. 

« A. B. Clot-Bey, Be la Pcste, 1840, p. 7; and Coup d'CEil sur la Peste, 1851. 



394 acclimation; or, the influence of 

" Mexico is divided, as respects climate, into the tierras calientes, or hot regions, the 
tierras templadas, or temperate regions, and the tierras frias, or cold regions. The first 
include the low grounds, or those under 2000 feet of elevation. The mean temperature of 
the first region, between the Tropics, is about 77° Fahr. ; being 14° to 16° above the mean 
temperature of Naples. The tierras templadas, which are of comparatively limited extent, 
occupy the slope of the mountain chains, and extend from 2500 to 5000 feet of elevation. 
The mean heat of the year is from 68° to 70° Fahr. ; and the extremes of heat and cold 
are here equally unknown. The tierras frias, or cold regions, include all the vast plains 
elevated 5000 feet and upwards above the level of the sea. In the city of Mexico, at an 
elevation of 7400 feet, the thermometer has sometimes fallen below the freezing point. 
This, however, is of rare occurrence; and the winters there are usually as mild as in 
Naples. In the coldest season, the mean heat of the day varies from 55° to 70°. The mean 
temperature of the city is about 64°, and that of the table-lands generally about 62°; being 
nearly equal to that of Rome." 28 

With regard to the great susceptibility of Mexicans of the table- 
lands, and even those of Metamoras, and other places in the low- 
lands, when for the first time exposed, we need only refer the reader 
to the " Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans on the 
Epidemic Yellow Fever of 1853," where ample testimony will be 
found. 

The report of Dr. McWilliam, on the celebrated epidemic of 
yellow fever at Boa Vista, in 1845, will be found interesting, in this 
connection ; and is remarkable for its minute detail and accuracy. 
He 



" The inhabitants consist chiefly of dark mulattoes, of various grades of European 
intermixture ; free and enslaved negroes ; with a small proportion of Europeans, princi- 
pally Portuguese and English. 

"Rate of Mortality from Yellow Fever in Porto Sal Ray. 
EUROPE AKS. 

Portuguese. — Number exposed to the fever 53 

" " attacked with fever 47 

" " died " 25 

" Ratio of deaths in the population 1 in 2-1 

" " number attacked 1 " 1-8 

English, including two Americans, exposed to the fever 11 

" Number attacked 8 

" " died 7 

" Ratio of deaths in population 1 in 1-6 

" " number attacked 1 " 1-1 

French. — Number exposed to fever 2 

" " attacked by fever 2 

Spaniards. — Number exposed, and not attacked 2 

28 McCulloch's Geographical Dictionary. 



CLIMATE AISTD DISEASES ON" MAN. 395 

NATIVE POPULATION. 

Free 666 

Slaves 249 

Total 915 

Died, 65 free and 3 slaves 68 

Eatio of deaths in native population 1 in 134" 

In this table, it will be seen that the ratio of deaths increased as 
the complexion darkened. Most of the deaths among the native 
population were among the mulattoes, and not blacks. 

The Spanish and Portuguese population, who are dark compared 
with Anglo-Saxons, suffer severely from yellow fever ; but do not, it 
seems, of those attacked, die in as great a ratio as the fairer races. 
They are very generally attacked in their towns, in consequence of 
crowded population, bad ventilation, and filthy habits. 

One of the ablest statisticians of the day shows, by figures, that 
yellow fever, in the Antilles (where English and French are the 
principal fair races), does not attack so large a portion of the popu- 
lation ; but is much more fatal there than in Spain. In the latter 
country, on the other hand, he says, almost the whole population of 
towns are attacked ; but the mortality is much less, in proportion to 
the number of cases. He attributes this universality of attack to 
the crowded population and filth of the Spanish towns, and to 
there being no acclimated population where the disease has been most 
fatal. Yellow fever is endemic in the Antilles, and only occasional 
in Spain. 29 

It is remarkable that these circumstances make no difference in 
the susceptibility of the negro : he always sleeps in badly ventilated 
apartments ; is always filthy ; and, in the hottest weather, will lie 
down and sleep, with a tropical sun pouring down upon his bare 

29 Moreau de Jonnes, Monographe de la Fievre Jaune, &c. pp. 312-13. 

In these new questions of the liability to, or exemption from, local morbific influence, of 
distinct types of man, we possess as yet but few statistics. Every authentic example, 
therefore, becomes interesting. I find the following in Domont D'Ueville ( Voyage de la 
Corvette L' Astrolabe, executee pendant les annees 1826-9, Paris, 1830, " Hisloire du Voyage," 
V., pp. 120 seqq.). The island of Vanikoro, "Archipel de la Pe>ouse," where this great 
navigator perished, is inhabited exclusively by black Oceanians, who there enjoy perfect 
health. Yet, so deadly is the climate, that the natives of the adjacent island of Tlkopia, 
who belong to the cinnamon-colored and distinct Polynesian race, taken thither as inter- 
preters by D'Urville, never ventured to sleep ashore, in dread of the malarial poison which 
ever proved fatal to themselves, however congenial to the blacks, Capt. Dillon's crew, 
previously, as well as D'Urville's French crew, suffered terribly from the effects of their 
short anchorage there. This pathological fact is another to the many proofs, collected in 
our volume, that the black race of Oceanica is absolutely unconnected by blood with the 
Polynesians proper. See portraits of " Vanikoro-islander" and " Tikopia-islander" (Nos. 
39, 40, of our Ethnographic Tableau, infra), for evidence of their absolute difference of type. 



396 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

head, during the day ; and, in the hottest night, will sleep with his 
head enveloped in a filthy blanket, to keep the musquitoes from 
annoying him ; and yet is exempt from yellow fever, while it is 
raging around him. 

Rio Janeiro has a population of 100,000 whites, and 200,000 
blacks and mixed bloods. The former are mostly Portuguese ; and 
it is difficult to explain their exemption from yellow fever, in the 
epidemic of 1849-50 (which has continued its march northwards, 
and so ravaged the seaports and other towns of the United States 
since) — I say it is difficult to explain the exemption, on any other 
ground than that of race. Not more than 3 or 4 per cent, of the 
Brazilians attacked, died; while 29 per cent, of the seamen 
(foreigners) died. 

It has been repeatedly asserted, that yellow fever never appeared 
in Rio previously to this date ; but it is exceedingly questionable 
whether it has not occurred there in a mild form, but with so little 
mortality as not to create alarm. Yellow fever does unquestionably 
occur in all grades. We published, some years ago, in the "Charles- 
ton Medical Journal," a sketch of the epidemic which prevailed in 
Mobile in 1847 — of so mild a grade as not to prove fatal probably 
in more than 2 per cent, of those attacked. A reference to the 
"Report of the New Orleans Sanitary Commission," will show that, 
according to the concurrent testimony of the leading physicians of 
Rio, the fevers of that city had assumed an extraordinary type for 
several years previously to the epidemic of 1849-50 ; and that many 
of the cases differed in no way from yellow fever : even black vomit 
was seen in some cases. It is presumable, therefore, that the popu- 
lation had been undergoing acclimation against this disease, for 
several years, without knowing it. Our observation has satisfied us, 
that the dark-skinned Spaniards, Portuguese, and other south Eu- 
ropeans, as well as the Jews, are more easily and thoroughly accli- 
mated against yellow fever, than the fairer races. 50 

It has been stoutly maintained, by many writers, that intermittent, 
remittent, and yellow fever, are but grades of the same disease; and 
as the first two forms are endemic, at Rio, the escape of the inhabi- 
tants from yellow fever, in the late epidemic, has been accounted for 
by acclimation through those marsh fevers. I will not, however, 
stop to argue with any one who contends for the identity of marsh 
and yellow fevers, in our present day: if their wow-identity be not 
now proven, it is vain to attempt to establish the non-identity of 
any two diseases. That very epidemic continued its march, during 

30 The reader is referred to Report of the New Orleans Sanitary Commission, for much 
valuable information about Rio Janeiro. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN". 397 

five years, from Rio to New York; and ravaged hundreds of places 
where remittent fevers were more common and more violent than in 
Rio. • To say nothing of countries further south, all the region from 
New Orleans to Norfolk is dotted with malarial towns, in which 
yellow fever has prevailed with terrible fatality. 

The following extract is from one of the most competent authori- 
ties, on this subject, in the United States : 

" The immunity of the African race from yellow fever is a problem unsolved ; but of the 
highest import in physiology and etiology. Whether this immunity be owing to color, or 
to an unknown transmissible and indestructible modification of the constitution, originally 
derived from the climate of Africa, or from anatomical conformation or physiological law, 
peculiar to the race, is not easy to determine. It does not appear that yellow fever prevails 
under an African sun; although the epidemic of New Orleans, in 1853, came well nigh 
getting the name 'African yellow fever,' 'African plague:' it was for weeks so called. 
Although non-creolized negroes are not exempt from yellow fever, yet they suffer little 
from it, and rarely die. On the other hand, they are the most liable to suffer from cholera" 
[and typhoid fever. — J. C. N.] "As an example of the susceptibility of this race, take 
the year 1841: among 1800 deaths from yellow fever, there were but three deaths among 
the blacks, two having been children; or 1 in GOO, or 1 in 14,000 of the whole population." 31 

The Doctor goes on to show "that the same immunity from death, 
in this disease, is enjoyed by the black race throughout the yellow- 
fever zone." 

The investigations of Dr. Dowler (and there is no one more com- 
petent to examine a historical point of this kind) lead him to the 
conclusion, that yellow fever is not an African disease. If this be 
true, it is a very strong argument in favor of specific distinctness of 
the negro race. We have abundant evidence, in the "United States, 
that no exposure to high temperature or marsh effluvia can protect 
an individual against the cause of yellow fever. The white races 
who have been exposed to a tropical sun, and lost much of their 
primitive plethora and vigor, are, as a general rule, less violently 
attacked by yellow fever ; but the negro gains his fullest vigor under 
a tropical sun, and is everywhere exempt from this disease. 32 

31 Bennet Dowlek, M. D., " Tableau of the Yellow Fever of 1853, with topographical, 
chronological, and historical sketches of the Epidemics of New Orleans, since their origin in 
1796." 

32 The works of M. le Dr. Boudin — now M^decin en chef de 1'Hopital Militaire du Roule, 
Paris, so well known as a distinguished army physician, at home, in Greece, and in Algeria, 
are the first, so far as we know, in any language, that approach this question of races, in 
relation to climate, with a truly philosophical spirit. He kindly sent us, several years ago, 
the following essays, the titles of which will show the range of his investigations: — "Etudes 
de G6ologie Me'dicales, &c." — "Etudes de Pathologie ComparcSe, &c." — " fitudes de Geo- 
graphic Medicales, &c." — "Lettres sur l'Algerie" — "Statistique de la population et de la 
colonisation en Algfirie" — "Statistique de la mortality des Armies." 

We have, in our essay, made frequent use of these volumes, from notes we had taken 
while reading them ; and should have made more direct reference to them, if we had had 



398 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

But it is time to bring this chapter to a close. It was stated, at 
the beginning, that our leading object was to study man in his rela- 
tions to what we defined Medical Qlimate; and we have adhered as 

the originals at hand ; but some of them, unfortunately, had been loaned out, and did not 
reach us in time. 

In these essays, the reader -will find a mass of very important statistical matter, bearing 
on the influence of climates on races, &c. He confirms all our assertions with regard to 
the comparative exemption of negroes from malarial diseases, and their greater liability 
to typhoid and lung diseases, as well as cholera. He further shows the interesting fact, 
that the Jews exhibit a peculiar physiology and pathology ; with other singular data, from 
which my space and subject only permit me to condense a few vital statistics illustrative 
of the present enormous increase of the "chosen people." 

In 1840, the Jews in Prussia numbered 190,000. They had increased by 50,000 (35 per 
cent.) since the census of 1822 The Christians, in the same kingdom, in 1822, were, 
11,519,000.; and, in 1840, 14,734,000 (only 18 per cent, of augmentation). During these 
eighteen years, births among the Jews exceeded deaths by 29 per 100; and, among the 
Christians, only 21. "The increase of the Jewish population is the more remarkable, 
because, between 1822 and 1840, some 22,000 Prussian Jews embraced Christianity, whilst 
there was no instance wherein a Christian had accepted Judaism." 

In Prussia, "out of 100,000 individuals, are reckoned: 

CHRISTIAN. JEWISH. 

Marriages 893 719 

Births 4001 8546 

Deaths, still-born comprised 2961 2161" 

the increase being due to excess of births over deaths, among the Jews. Besides, the Jews 
are longer lived : — their women do not work in factories, nor labor whilst nursing ; so that, 
upon 100,000 infants, we find 

"CHRISTIANS. JEWS. 

Still-born 3,569 2,524 

Died in the first year 17,413 12,935" 

Again, the men are rarely sailors, miners, &c. They are sober. They marry young. 
Upon 100,000, the Christians bring forth 280 illegitimate children ; the Jews only 67. The 
proportion of boys is greater among the Israelites. They are subject to cutaneous and 
ophthalmic diseases, since the times of Tacitus, and of Moses ; but are wonderfully exempt 
from heavier scourges — from plague, in 1336; from typhus, in 1505 and 1824; from 
intermittent fevers, at Rome, in 1691; from dysentery, at Nimegue, in 1736. Croup is rare 
among their children ; and, at Posen, where Shlaves have the plica Polonica as 1 in 33, and 
Germans as 1 in 65, the Jews only suffer as 1 in 88. 

They have more old men and more children than Christians ; and their health is every- 
where better — owing, in part, to race preserving itself pure through intermarriage ; and 
especially to the hygiene enjoined upon them by their religion. 
♦ Tacitus, when the Jews were exiled to Sardinia, wrote "Et si ob gravitatem cceli inte- 
riissent, vile damnum!" — and again, "Profana illis omnia quse apud nos sana; rursum 
concessa apud illos quse nobis incesta." On which Dr. Boudin observes: 33 "This saying 
of the great historian is at least as true at the physical as at the moral-order point of 
view. The more one studies the Jewish race, the more one perceives it subjected to patho- 
logical laws which, in the double aspect of aptitude and immunities, establish a broad 
line of demarcation between it and the populations amid which it happens to dwell." 

83 £twUs stattitiques sur les lois de Ja Population, Paris, 1849, pp. 24-6. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON" MAN. 399 

closely to the plan as the complex nature of the subject would 
permit. 

After the train of facts adduced, it will hardly be denied that the 
historical races — those whose migrations have brought them within 
the range of investigation— have their appropriate geographical 
ranges, beyond which they cannot go with impunity ; and there is 
ample ground for the belief, that the sam.e general law applies 
equally to all other races that have not yet been subjected to statis- 
tical scrutiny. Nor could any other result have been rationally 
looked for, by one who reflects on the wonderful harmony that per- 
vades the infinite works of Nature ; and which is nowhere more 
beautifully illustrated, than in the adaptation of animals and plants 
to climate, as exhibited in the innumerable Faunas and Floras of 
the earth. 

Viewed anatomically and zoologically, man is but an animal; and 
governed by the same organic laws as other animals. He has more 
intelligence than others; combines a moral with his physical nature; 
and is more impressible than others by surrounding influences. 
Although boasting of reason, as the prerogative that distinguishes 
him, he is, in many respects, the most unreasonable of all animals. 
While civilization, in its progress, represses the gross vices of bar- 
barism, and brings the refinements of music, poetry, the fine arts, 
together with the precepts of a purer religion, it almost balances the 
account by luxury, insincerity, political, social, and trading vices, 
which follow its march everywhere. If the ancient Britons and 
Kelts be fairly balanced against the modern Anglo-Saxons, Yankees, 
and Gauls, it will be hard to say in which scale the most true virtue 
will be found. Fashion, in our day, has substituted moral for phy- 
sical cruelty. The ancient barbarians plundered, and cut each others' 
throats. Civilized man now passes his life in scandal and the tricks 
of trade. Look around, now-a-days, at the so-called civilized nations 
of the earth, and ask what they have been doing for the last half 
century ? We see man everywhere, not only warring against laws, 
voluntarily imposed upon himself for his own good, but bidding 
defiance to the laws of God, both natural and revealed. He is the 
most destructive of all animals. Not satisfied with wantonly destroy- 
ing, for amusement, the animals and plants around him, his greatest 
glory lies in blowing out the brains of his fellow-man ; nay, more, his 
chief delight is to destroy his own soul and body by vice and luxury. 
Nor does his rebellious and restless spirit suffer him to be content 
with a limited field of action : he forsakes the land of his birth, with 
all its associations, and all the comforts which earth can give, to 
colonize foreign lands — where he knows full well that a thousand 



400 ACCLIMATION; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF 

hardships must await him, and with the certainty of risking his life 
in climates that nature never intended him for. One generation never 
profits hy the experience of another, nor the child by that of its 
parents. "Who will undertake to estimate the amount of human 
life sacrificed, since the discovery of Columbus, by attempts to 
colonize tropical climates ? 

Naturalists have divided the earth into zoological realms — each 
possessing an infinite variety of animals and plants, peculiar to it ; 
but this is not the place for details on this head. To the reader who 
is not familiar with researches of this kind, we may venture a few 
plain remarks. When the continent of America was discovered 
(with a few exceptions in the Arctic Circle, where the continents 
nearly touch), its quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, plants, 
all were different species from those found in the Old World. Hence 
the conclusion, that the whole Fauna and Flora of America were 
here created. If we go on to compare other great divisions of the 
world, such as Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, Polynesia, the same 
general law holds throughout: each division possesses its peculiar 
animals and plants, having no connection by descent with others ; 
and each group forming a grand and harmonious zoological province. 

The question naturally arises — Does man form an exception to this 
universal law? Can he, by any evidence, human or otherwise, be thus 
separated from the organic world ? We think not. In each one of 
these natural realms, we find a type of man, whose history is lost 
in antiquity; and whose physical characters, language, habits, and 
instincts, are peculiar; — whose organization is in harmony with the 
station in which he is placed, and who cannot be transferred to an 
opposite climate without destruction. 

Recent researches enable us to trace back many of those types of 
man, with the same characteristics that mark them now, at least 
4000 years. In Egypt alone, as proven by her monuments, were 
seen, in those early times, through the agency of wars and com- 
merce, Egyptians, Berbers, Nubians, Abyssinians, Negroes, Ionians, 
Jews, Assyrians, Tartars, and others, — with the same lineaments 
they now present, and obeying, no doubt, the same physiological and 
pathological laws. In fact, so well defined were the races in the 
time of the early Pharaohs, that the Egyptians had already classified 
them into red, white, yellow, and black ; and each of the types, then 
as now, formed a link in a distinct Fauna. 34 

Let us now ask the reader to reflect on the long chain of facts 
presented in this and the preceding chapters, and calmly decide 
whether we are justified in drawing the following conclusions : 

84 See Types of Mankind; aiid M. Pulszky's chap. II, infra. 



CLIMATE AND DISEASES ON MAN. 401 

1. That the earth is naturally divided into zoological realms — 
each possessing a climate, Fauna, and Flora, exclusively its own. 

2. That the Fauna of each realm originated in that realm, and 
that it has no consanguinity with other Faunas. 

3. That each realm possesses a group of human races, which, 
though not identical in physical and intellectual characters, are 
closely allied with one another, and are disconnected from all other 
races. We may cite, as examples, the white races of Europe, the 
Mongols of Asia, the Macks of Africa, and the aborigines of America. 

4. That the types of man, belonging to these realms, antedate all 
human records, by thousands of years ; and are as ancient as the 
Faunas of which each forms an original element. 

5. That the types of man are separated by specific characters, as 
well marked and as permanent as those which designate the species 
of other genera. 

6. That the climates of the earth may be divided into physical 
and medical ; and that each species of man, having its own physio- 
logical and pathological laws, is peculiarly affected by both climates. 

7. That no race of man can be regarded as cosmopolite ; but that 
those races which are indigenous to latitudes intermediate between 
the equator and poles, approach nearer to cosmopolitism than those 
of the Arctic or the Torrid Zone. 

8. That the assertion, that any one race ever has, or ever can be, 
assimilated to all physical or all medical climates, is a hypothesis 
unsustained by a single historical fact, and opposed to the teachings 
of natural history. 

J. C. KT. 



26 



402 THE MONOGENISTS AND 



CHAPTER V. 
the MONOGENISTS and the POLYGENISTS: 

BEING AN EXPOSITION OP THE DOCTRINES OF SCHOOLS PROFESSING TO SUSTAIN DOGMATICALLT 

the UNITY or the DIVERSITY 

OF 

HUMAN RACES; 

WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THE ANTIQUITY OP MANKIND UPON EARTH, VIEWED 
CHRONOLOGICALLY, HISTORICALLY, AND PAL^EONTOLOGICALLY. 

BY GEO. R. GLIDDON. 

" He is the freeman whom the Truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside." 

COWPER. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



" Les recherches geographiques sur le siege primordial, ou, comme 
on dit, sur le berceau de l'espece humaine, ont dans le fait un carac- 
tere purement niythique. 'Nous ne connaissons,' dit Guillaume de 
Humboldt, dans un travail encore inedit sur la diversity des langues 
et des peuples, ' nous ne connaissons ni historiquement, ni par ancune 
tradition certaine, un moment ou l'espece humaine n'ait pas ete 
separee en groupes de peuples. Si cet etat de cboses a existe des 
l'origine, ou s'il s'est produit plus tard, c'est ce qu'on ne saurait 
decider par l'bistoire. Des legendes isolees se retrouvant sur des 
points tres-divers du globe, sans communication apparente, sont en 
contradiction avec la premiere hypothese, et font descendre le genre 
bumain tout entier d'un couple unique. Cette tradition est si 
repandue, qu'on l'a quelquefois regardee comme un antique souvenir 
des hommes. Mais cette circonstance meme prouverait plutot qu'il 
n'y a la aucune transmission reelle d'un fait, aucun fondement vrai- 
ment bistorique, et que c'est tout simplement l'identite de la eoncep- 



THE POLYGENISTS. 403 

tion humaine, qui partout a conduit les homrues a nne explication 
semblable d'un phenomene identique. Un grand nornbre de mythes, 
sans liaison historique les uns avec les autres, doivent ainsi leur 
ressemblance et leur origine a la parite des imaginations ou des 
reflexions de 1' esprit bumain. Ce qui montre encore dans la tradi- 
tion dont il s'agit le caractere manifeste de la fiction, c'est qu'elle 
pretend expliquer un phenomeue en debors de toute experience, 
celui de la premiere origine de l'espece bumaine, d'une maniere 
conforme a l'experience de nos jours ; la maniere, par exemple, dont, 
k une epoque ou le genre humain tout entier comptait deja des 
milliers d'annees d'existence, une ile deserte.ou un vallon isole dans 
les montagnes peut avoir ete peuple. En vain la pensee se plongc- 
rait dans la meditation du probleme de cette premiere origine : 
l'bomme est si etroitement lie a, son espece et au temps, que Ton ne 
saurait concevoir un etre bumain venant au monde sans une famille 
deja existante, et sans un passe. Cette question done ne pouvant 
etre resolue ni par la voie du raisonnement ni par celle de l'experi- 
ence, faut-il penser que l'etat primitif, tel que nous le decrit une 
pretendue tradition, est reellement bistorique, ou bien que l'espece 
bumaine, des son principe, couvrit la terre en forme de peuplades ? 
C'est ce que la science des langnes ne saurait decider par elle-meme, 
comme elle ne doit point non plus cbercher une solution ailleurs 
pour en tirer des eclaireissements sur les problemes qui l'occupent.' " 1 



Sucb is the language, and these are the mature opinions, of two 
brothers, than whom the world's history presents none more illus- 
trious. Here the ultimate results of Wilbelm von Humboldt, among 
the most acute philologists of his generation, stand endorsed by that 
"Nestor of science," Alexander von Humboldt, whose immortal 
labors in physical investigation stretch over nearly three cycles of 
ordinary human vitality. 

I subscribe unreservedly to every syllable contained in the above 
citation. According to my individual view, this paragraph condenses 
the "ne-pl us-ultra" of human ratiocination upon mankind's origines. 
With this conviction, I proceed to set forth the accident through 
which it prefaces my contribution to our new work upon anthro- 
pology. 

My excellent and learned friend M. Gustave d'Eichthal — so long 
Secretary of the parental Societe Ethnologique de Paris, and author 

1 Alexandre de Humboldt, " COSMOS. Essai d'une Description Physique du Monde" — 
traduit par H. Fate. 1". partie, Paris, Gide & O., 1846, in 8vo., pp. 425-7. I refer 
to the first French edition : the copy now used having been obtained by me at Paris, on its 
first week's issue. — G. R. G. 



404 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of many erudite papers — amidst all kinds of scientific facilities for 
which I feel proud to acknowledge myself dehtor to himself and 
many of his colleagues (MM. D'Avezac and Alfred Maury espe- 
cially), favored me, during my fourth sojourn in France, 1854-5, 
with a set of their Society's "Bulletins." 

Reperusing lately their instructive debate on the problem — " What 
are the distinctive characteristics of the white and black races ? What 
are the conditions of association between these races?" 2 I was led to 
open an antecedent ISTo. ; 3 wherein, after alluding to Cosmos — "M. 
Vivien (de Saint-Martin) observes how, in the extract quoted from 
M. de Humboldt, that which this illustrious writer terms the native 
unity of the human species, does not seem to imply, as might be 
thought, the idea of descent from a single pair. M. de Humboldt 
himself, it is true, does not declare himself, as respects this, in a 
manner altogether explicit. But the opinion of those eminent men 
upon whose authority he relies, and of whom he cites the words, is, 
on the contrary, expressed in the most formal manner. 

" ' Human races, says Johannes Miiller, 4 in his ' Physiology of 
Man,' are the (diverse) forms of a single species, whose unions 
remain fruitful, and which perpetuate themselves through genera- 
tion. They are not species of one genus ; because, if they were, 
upon crossing 5 they would become sterile. But, to know whether 
existing races of man descend from one or from many primitive 
men — this is that which cannot be discovered by experience.' ' 

M. Vivien continues with extracts from the paragraph that heads 
' my essay. Certain typographical lacuna, however, induced a refer- 
ence to Humboldt's complete work ; and the readiest accessible at 
the moment happened to be Otte's English translation, "from the 
German." 6 

2 Bulletin de la Soc. Elhnol. de Paris, Tome I*., anne'e 1847 ; " Stances du 23 avril au 9 
juillet," p. 59 seqq. — (Vide ante, Pulszky's chapter, pp. 188-192) 

3 Id., ann^e 1846, pp. 74-6. 

* Physiol, des Menschen, Bd. II, S. 768, 772-4:— and Kosmos, Fr. ed., I, p. 425, and p. 
578, note 38. Compare Sabine's translation of this passage (I, p. 352-3) with Otte's 
(I, p. 354). 

5 This doctrine now seems to be a non-sequilur, .after Morton's researches upon hybridity. 
Conf., as the first document, " Hybridily in animals and plants, considered in reference to 
the question of the Unity of the Human Species" — Amer. Jour, of Science and Arts, vol. 
Ill, 2d series, 1847. The substance of Morton's later publications, in the "Charleston 
Medical Journal," may be consulted in "Types of Mankind," 1854, pp. 372, 410: and they 
have since been enlarged, by Dk. Nott, in Hotz's translation (Moral and Intellectual 
Diversity of Races, Philadelphia, 12mo., 1856: Appendix B, pp. 473-504) of part of the 
first volume of De Goeineau. 

« Cosmos: a Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Harpers' American ed., 
New York, 1850, I, pp. 354-5 



THE POL YGENISTS. 405 

To my surprise, several passages (sometimes in the letter, but 
oftener in the spirit) did not correspond with the extracts quoted by 
M.Vivien de Saint-Martin, from the French edition of "Cosmos." 
To the latter I turned. A glance changed surprise into suspicion, 
which further collation soon confirmed. Having thereby become 
considerably enlightened, myself, upon the animus and the literary 
fidelity with which foreign scientific works are "done into English," 
for the book-trade of Great Britain and the United States of Ame- 
rica ; and inasmuch as sundry theological naturalists, in this country, 
have latterly been making very free with Humboldt's honored name, 
— estimated as their authority "par excellence" on the descent of all 
the diversified types of mankind from "Adam and Eve ;" it may be 
gratifying to their finer feelings, no less than to their nice apprecia- 
tion of critical probity, to demonstrate the singular orthodoxy of 
the savant whom we all venerate in common. 

Already, in 1846, when transmitting from Paris, to the late Dr. 
Morton, one of the earliest copies of the French edition of "Cosmos," 
I accompanied it with regrets that the twice-used expression — " la 
distinction desolante des races superieurs et des races inferieurs" 7 — 
should have sanctioned the irrelevant introduction of (what others 
construe as) morbid sentimentalism into studies which Morton and 
his school were striving to restrict within the positive domain of 
science. How completely Morton disapproved of this unlucky 
term, has been happily shown by his biographer — our lamented 
colleague, Dr. Henry S. Patterson. 8 But, whilst fully respecting 
Baron de Humboldt's unqualified opinion — on a doctrine which- 
other great authorities either oppose or hold to be at least moot, viz., 
the unity of mankind — I was not prepared for so much of that which 
Carlyle styles " flunkeyism" towards Anglo-Saxon popular credu- 
lity (so manfully denounced by Dr. Robert Knox 9 ), which both of 
the English translations of "Cosmos" exhibit. 

In the first place, let us open that one which "was undertaken in 
compliance with the wish of Baron von Humboldt." I0 The possessor 

7 Cosmos, Fr. ed., p. 430; repeated p. 579, note 42. 

8 Types of Mankind, " Memoir of Samuel George Morton," p. li-liii. 

9 Of Edinburgh — The Races of Men: a Fragment. Philadelphia edition, 12mo, 1850, pp. 
11-2, 19, 37, 65, 247-54, 292— one might say passim. Allowance made for the age, ten to 
fifteen years ago, -when the MSS. seem to have been written ; and divesting his work of 
much rash assertion, hasty composition, and some national or personal eccentricities, its 
author can safely boast that it contains more truth upon ethnology than any book of its 
size in the English tongue. 

10 Cosmos, &c. "Translated under the superintendence of Lieut.-Col. Edward Sabine, 
R.A., For. Sec. R. S.;" London, Murray, 2d ed., 8vo, 1847; I, "Editor's Preface; and, 
for the omission complained of, p. 353 — after the word 'experience' (438)." 



406 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of the German original, or of Faye's French version, will hunt in 
vain for the long and noble paragraph above quoted ! It is simply 
expunged: probably not to shock the conservatism of the Royal 
Society. Promotion might have been stopped, long ago, by the 
"lords spiritual and temporal," had an officer in H. M. Service 
dared even to translate such heretical opinions as those avowed by 
the brothers Humboldt: the "For. Sec." would have soon ceased 
to be Secretary at all, to any Royal Society. 

In the second, we refer to Otte's translation ; " learning from his 
preface — " The present volumes differ from those of Mrs. Sabine in 
having all the foreign measures converted into English terms, in 
being published at considerably less than one-third of the price, and 
in being a translation of the entire work; for I have not conceived 
myself justified in omitting passages, simply because they might be 
deemed slightly obnoxious to our national prejudices." Fair enough 
this seems. That which routine and expectancies naturally forbade 
the official to do, "into English," might, one would suppose, be 
honestly performed by a private individual. Nevertheless, upon 
verification, we discover this to be, also, as Talleyrand once observed 
to Castlereagh, "une tres forte supposition!" By paraphrasis and 
periphrasis, through dextrous substitutions of milder terms, and a 
happy adoption of equivocal interpretations, Mr. Otte has effaced 
the precision of his author's language ; obscuring thereby both of 
the Humboldts' scientific deductions so effectually, that their suppo- 
sititiously-joint advocacy of "all mankind's descent from Adam 
and Eve," meets everywhere with the gratitude and applause of 
wondering theologers ! 

To render this evident, I have chosen the French translation, 
above cited, as an appropriate epigraph and introduction to the 
subjects developed in the present chapter. At foot, the reader will 
find Otte's English 12 rendering of the German text ; which is like- 

" Id., — "Translated from the German, by E. C. Ott£," and before cited. Harpers' New 
York edition, 1850. I wonder whether it is the same, textually, asBoHN's; which doubt 
inclination does not now prompt me to take some trouble in verifying. 

12 Extract from Otte's Cosmos, Amer. ed., pp. 354-5:— 

" Geographical investigations regarding the ancient seat, the so-called cradle of the human 
race, are not devoid of a mythical character. 'We do not know,' says Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt, in an unpublished work On the Varieties of Languages and Nations, ' either from 
history or from authentic tradition, any period of time in which the human race has not 
been divided into social groups. Whether the gregarious condition was original, or of 
subsequent occurrence, we have no historic evidence to show. The separate mythical 
relations found to exist independently of one another, in different parts of the earth, 
appear to refute the first hypothesis ; and concur in ascribing the generation of the whole 
human race to the union of one pair. The general prevalence of this myth has caused it 
to be regarded as a traditionary record transmitted from the primitive man to his descend- 



THE POLYGENISTS. 407 

wise subjoined. Unfortunately, want of familiarity with the latter 
tongue precludes personal comparison of this translation with the 
original; but, for the accuracy of its French interpretation, we 



ants. But this very circumstance seems rather to prove that it has no historical founda- 
tion, but has simply arisen from an identity in the mode of intellectual conception, which 
has everywhere led man to adopt the same conclusion regarding identical phenomena ; in 
the same manner as many myths have doubtless arisen, not from any historical connection 
existing between them, but from an identity in human thought and imagination. Another 
evidence in favor of the purely mythical nature of this belief, is afforded by the fact that 
the first origin of mankind — a phenomenon which is wholly beyond the sphere of experi- 
ence — is explained in perfect conformity with existing views, being considered on the 
principle of the colonization of some desert island or remote mountainous valley, at a 
period when mankind had already existed for thousands of years. It is in vain that we 
direct our thoughts to the solution of the great problem of the first origin, since man is 
too intimately associated with his own race, and with the relations of time, to conceive of 
the existence of an individual independently of a preceding generation and ago. A solution 
of those difficult questions, which can not be determined by inductive reasoning or by expe- 
rience — whether the belief in this presumed traditional condition be actually based on 
historical evidence, or whether mankind inhabited the earth in gregarious associations from 
the origin of the race — -cannot, therefore, be determined from philological data ; and yet 
its elucidation ought not to be sought for from other sources.' " 

"Die geographischen Forschungen fiber den alten Sitz, die sogennante Wiege des 
Menschengeschlechts haben in der That einen rein mythisclien Charakter. ' Wir 
kennen,' sagt Wilhelm von Humboldt in einer noch ungedruckten Arbeit fiber 
die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen und Volker, ' geschichtlich oder audi nur durch irgend 
sichere Ueberlieferung keinen Zeitpunkt, in welchem das Menschengeschlecht nicht in 
Volkerhaufen getrennt gewesen ware. Ob dieser Zustand der urspriingliche war oder erst 
sp'ater entstand, l'aszt sich daher geschichtlich nicht entscheiden. Einzelne, an sehr 
verschiedeuen Punkten der Erde, ohne irgend sichtbaren Zusammenhang, wiederkehrende 
Sagen verneinen die erstere Annahme, und lassen das ganze Menschengeschlecht von 
Einem Menschenpaare abstammen. Die weite Verbreitung dieser Sage hat sie bisweilen 
fur eine Urerinnerung der Menschheit halten lassen. Gerade dieser Umstand aber beweist 
vielmehr dasz ihr keine Ueberlieferung und nichts geschichtliches zum Grunde lag, sondern 
nur die Gleichheit der menschlichen Vorstellungsweise zu derselben Erklarung der gleichen 
Erscheinung fiihrte : wie gewisz viele Mythen, ohne geschichtlichen Zusammenhang, blosz 
aus der Gleichheit des menschlichen Dichtens und Grfibelns entstanden. Jene Sage tr'agt 
auch darin ganz das Gepr'age menschlicher Erfindung, dasz sie die auszer aller Erfahrung 
liegende Erscheinung des ersten Entstehens des Menschengeschlechts auf eine innerhalb 
heutiger Erfahrung liegende Weise, und so erkl'aren will, wie in Zeiten, wo das ganze 
Menschengeschlecht schon Jahrtausende hindurch bestanden hatte, eine wiiste Insel oder 
ein abgesondertes Gebirgsthal mag bevolkert worden sein. Vergeblich wfirde sich das 
Nachdenken in das Problem jener ersten Entstehung verticft haben, da der Mensch so an 
sein Geschlecht und an die Zeit gebunden ist, dasz sich ein Einzelner ohne vorhandenes 
Geschlecht und ohne Vergangenheit gar nicht in menschlichem Dasein fassen liiszt. Ob 
also in dieser weder auf dem Wege der Gedanken noch der Erfahrung zu entscheidenden 
Frage wirklich jener angeblich traditionelle Zustand der geschichtliche war, oder oh das 
Menschengeschlecht von seinem Beginnen an volkerweise den Erbdoden bewohnte ? darf 
die Sprachkunde weder aus sich bestimmen, noch, die Entscheidung anderswoher nohmond, 
zum Erklarungsgrunde fur sich brauchen wollen.' " 

("Kosmos. Entwurf einer physichen Weltheschreibung," von Alexander von Hum- 
boldt. Funfte Lieferung, Stuttgurd und Tubingen, pp. 381-2.) 



408 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

possess the highest voucher. M. Faye states: 13 "Another part, 
relative to the great question of human races, has been translated 
by M. Guigniaut, Member of the Institute. This question was 
foreign to my habitual studies : moreover, it has been treated, in 
the German work, with such superiority of views and of style, that 
M. fie Humboldt had to seek, among his friends, the man most 
capable of giving its equivalent to French readers. M. de Humboldt 
naturally addressed himself to M. Guigniaut; and this savant has 
been pleased to undertake the translation of the last ten pages of 
the text, as well as of the corresponding notes." Consequently, 
besides the guarantee for exactitude afforded by the name of the 
erudite translator of Creuzer's Symbolik, it may be taken for granted 
that, whatever the German original may or may not say," Baron von 
Humboldt, to whom the French edition was peculiarly an offspring 
of love, endorses the latter without reservation. 

It only remains now for me to retranslate M. Guigniaut's French 
into our own language, in order that the reader may seize the MM. 
de Humboldts' point of view. To facilitate his appreciation, I 
mark with bold type those expressions requiring particular atten- 
tion ; and, furthermore, insert, between brackets and in italics, 
such deductions as appear to me legitimately to be evolved from 
them. 

" Geographical researches on the primordial seat, or, as it is said, 
upon the cradle of the human species, possess in fact a character 
purely mythic. 'We do not know,' says "William de Humboldt, in 
a work as yet inedited, upon the diversity of languages and of peo- 
ples, ' we do not know, either historically, or through any [zvhat- 
soever] certain tradition, a moment when the human species was not 
already separated into groups of peoples. [Hebrew literature, in 
common with all others, is thus rejected, being equally unhistorical as 
the rest.'] Whether this state of things has existed from the origin 
[say, beginning'], or whether it was produced later, is what cannot 
be decided through history. Some isolated legends being re-en- 
countered upon very diverse points of the globe, without apparent 
communication, stand in contradiction to the first hypothesis, and 
make the entire human genus descend from a single pair [as, for 

13 Cosmos, Ft. ed., "Avertissement du Traducteur," p. ii. 

14 Comparative experience of German authors and their translators teaches me to be 
particular. Compare, for instance, CheV. Bunsen's JEgyptens slelle in der Weltgechichte, 
with what is called, in English, its translation! As is usual with political composition in 
these United States, one version of the same document is printed for the North, and another, 
very different, for the South ; so, in like manner, that which suits the masculine stomachs 
of German men of science becomes diluted, until its real flavor is gone, before it is offered 
to the more sensitive palates of the British and Anglo-American "reading public." 



THE POLYGE NIST S. 409 

example, in the ancient look called " Genesis."] This tradition is so 
widely spread, that it has sometimes been regarded as an antique 
remembrance of men. But this circumstance itself would rather 
prove that there is not therein any real transmission of a fact, any- 
soever truly-historical foundation ; and that it is simply the iden- 
tity of human conception, which everywhere leads mankind to a 
similar explanation of an identical phenomenon. A great number 
of myths, without historical link [say, connection - ] between the ones 
and the others, owe in this manner their resemblance and their 
origin to the parity of the imaginations or of the reflections of the 
human mind. That which shows still more, in the tradition of 
which we are treating, the manifest character of fiction [Old and 
New Testament narratives included, of course] is, that it claims to 
explain a phenomenon beyond all human experience, that of the 
first origin of the human species, in a manner conformable to the 
experience of our own day ; the manner, for instance, in which, at 
an epoch when the whole human genus counted already thousands 
of years of existence, a desert island, or a valley isolated amid 
mountains, may have been peopled. Vainly would thought dive 
into the meditation of this first origin : man is so closely bound to 
his species and to time, that one cannot conceive [such a thing as] 
an human being coming into the world without a family already 
existing, and without a past [antecedent, i. e. to such man's advent]. 
This question, therefore, not being resolvable either by a process of 
reasoning or through that of experience, must it be considered that 
the primitive state, such as a pretended [alluding to the Biblical, 
necessarily] tradition describes to us, is really historical — or else, that 
the human species, from its commencement, covered the earth in the 
form of peoples ? 15 This is that which the science of languages 
cannot decide [as theologers suppose!] by itself, as [in like manner] 
it ought not either to seek for a solution elsewhere, 16 in order to 
draw thence elucidations of those problems which occupy it." 

15 « Peuplades" corresponds, therefore, at the Humboldts' united point of view, with 
Prof. Agassiz's doctrine (Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1850) that — Men must have 
originated in "nations:" adopted and enlarged upon by Dr. Nott and myself in "Types of 
Mankind," pp. 73-9. Two years of subsequent and exclusive devotion to this study, in 
France, England, and this country, have satisfied my own mind upon its absolute truth. 

16 Something of the same nature, viz., that comparative philology should confine its 
investigations within its legitimate sphere, has been set forth as a precept, if violated in 
practice, in that extraordinary chapter, entitled " Ethnology v. Phonology," contributed by 
Prof. Max-Miiller to Chev. Bunsen's still more extraordinary and most ponderous work 
[Christianity and Mankind: their beginnings and prospects: in 7 volumes! See vol. iii., 
"Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, applied to Language and Religion, pp. 
352, 48G, &c.) There was really no need that the erudite Chevalier should warn his readers 
(p. 21) that " Comte's Positivism has no place in the philosophy of history," understood a la 



410 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

We can now appreciate the philosophic tone in which the Hum- 
bolclts use such terms as myths, fiction, and pretended tradition, in 
reference to every account purporting to give us the origin of man- 
kind — Semitic narrations inclusive. On the real authority of the 
latter, they doubtless held the same views as their great country- 
man, Ideler : 

" Traditiones semiticEe, quae in lihris Veteris Testamenti deposit* 
sunt et conservatse, haud quaquam sufficiunt, quippe quia recentioris 
sunt originis, ornni fabularum genere refertse et nimis arcto terrarum 
tractu circumscripta?, prretereaque tarn indoles Hebraeoruni nationi 
propria quam diversorum, qui singulos libros composuerunt, aucto- 
rum manifestum consilium doctrinam theocratic* a sacerdotum cor- 
pore quasi repraesentatas condendi efFecerunt, ut verse historian princi- 
pia multis in locis aperte negligerentur." 17 

In common with their equally-renowned German contemporary, 
Lepsitjs, each, in his inquiries into the origin of humanity, "leaves 
aside the theological point of view, which has nothing to do with 
science." 18 "The paradisiacal myth," observes Prof. Tucn, 19 "has 
been generally more profoundly understood by philosophers than by 
theologians. Kant 20 and Schiller 21 have employed the Scripture 
document in elucidating physiological inquiries on the progressive 
development of mankind: both of these philosophers correctly 
remark, that the myth does not represent a debasement or sinking 
down from original perfection to imperfection — not a victory of 
sensuality over reason; but, on the contrary, it manifests the ad- 

Bunsen : nor could one have credited a\ priori that his learned contributor is the same person 
who wrote that excellent work, " The Languages of the Seat of War" (London, 2d ed., 1855.) 
I am not singular either in this opinion. A philologist of far severer and profounder 
training than the above-named scholars, M. Eknest Renan, of the Bibliotheque Imperiale, 
lias already remarked: "As for the ideas recently put forth by M. Max-Miiller (dans les 
Outlines de M. Bunsen, t. I, p. 263 et suiv. 473 et suiv.) upon the division of tongues into 
three families, Semitic, Arian, Touranian — this last containing everything which is neither 
Arian nor Semitic ! — and about the original unity of these three families, it is difficult to 
see in them anything else than an act of complaisance towards views that are not his own ; 
and one likes to believe that the learned editor of the Rig- Veda would regret that a work 
so little worthy of him should be too seriously discussed" (Histoire et Sysleme compart des 
Langues Semitiques, "Ouvrage eouronne° par l'Institut," l re partie, Paris, 1855, p. 466). 

17 Heemapion, sive Rudimenta Hieroglyphicce Veterum JEgyptiorum Literatures. Pare 
prior, Lipsioe, 4to, 1841 ; p. 3 of Introduction. 

18 Types of Mankind, p. 233. 

19 Kommenlar iiber die Genesis, p. 61 : cited in "Introduction to the Book of Genesis, &c." 
from the German of Dr. Petek von Bohlen ; edited by James Heywoop, M. P., F. R. S. ; 
London, 1855; II, p. 78. 

20 " Muthmasslicher Anfang des Menschengeschlects (Probable Beginning of the Human 
Race): Berliner Monatschrift, 1786, S l . 1."— Ibid. 

21 '• Etwas iiber die erste Menschengesellschafl (On the First Human Society) : SiimmtHche 
Werke, 1825, Band 16 — Heyicood's Von Bohlen." 



THE POLYGENISTS. 411 

vancement of man from a state of comparative rudeness to freedom 
and civilization. The historical individuality of Adam is no longer 
maintained'; he becomes the general representative of humanity." 

"It is strange," continues Dohm, "that such pains have been 
taken to trace to the Jews not only the origin of all the ideas of 
science and religion which are found among eastern nations, but 
even the commencement of every possible variety of usage, custom, 
and ceremony. The small and circumscribed people of the Hebrews, 
who were generally despised, and who never maintained any inter- 
course with other nations, by trade or by conquest, by religious 
missionaries or by philosophical travellers, are supposed, according 
to the dreams of certain learned men, to have supplied all Asia, and 
from thence the whole world, with religion, philosophy, and laws, 
and even with manners and morals" — not to mention Ethnography ! 

But, in Lutheran Germany, where thorough Hebraical scholarship 
has liberated the public mind from the thraldom of ignorant priest- 
craft, these reasonings are familiar to every reader of a "Kosmos for 
the People:" 22 

" Nothing remains but to embrace the opinion, that the distinct 
characteristics of the human race were imprinted at all times ; or 
that, in general, mankind does not descend from one man and one 
woman, from Adam and Eve, but from several human pairs ; and to 
answer this question was already our purpose in the present chapter. 
But many of my readers will now say, that God, in the Bible, has 
created only one human pair. Perfectly correct. I reply to this only, 
that God did not write the Bible, but that Moses may have written 
the Pentateuch ; and that whether he actually did write (these five 
books), scholars do not know themselves. But we know, quite cer- 
tainly, that plants and animals were created at the same time, and 
not in several days of creation. We know, very positively, that, 
without -the sun, no day or night interchanges ; and that the sun 
was not created on the fourth, but on the first day. As certainly 
do we know, that neither plants nor animals could have lived pre- 
viously to that creation of the sun ; that the beasts, the worms, and 
the reptiles, were not created later than the birds ; and that Adam 
and Eve were not alone the first human beings upon earth." 

" The Semitic race," holds the latest and ablest historian of their 
language, Renan, 23 "is recognized almost uniquely through its nega- 
tive characteristics : it has neither mythology [of its own] nor epopee, 
neither science nor philosophy, neither fiction nor plastic arts, nor 

22 Giebel, Gesckichte des Weltalls der Erde und Hirer Bewohner; Ein Kosmos furs Volke; 
Leipzig, 1851. 

23 Histoire des Langues Simitiques (supra, note 16), p. 16, 25-6. 



412 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

civil life." " The Semitic tongues appear to ns, from ante-historical 
times, cantonned in the same regions where we see them spoken 
even at this day, and whence they have never issued, except through 
Phoenician colonies and the Mussulman invasion : I mean in that 
peninsular space shut in at the north by the mountains of Armenia, 
and at the east by the mountains which bound the basin of the 
Tigris. "So family of tongues has travelled less, nor radiated less 
exteriorly : one would search in vain, beyond the southwest of Asia, 
for a well-marked trace of an ante-historical sojourn of the Shemites. 
The antique memorials of geography and of history, contained in 
the first pages of Genesis — pages that we have a right to regard as 
the common archives of the Shemitic race — can only furnish us 
with some conjectures about the migrations that preceded the entry 
of the Shemites into the region in which one would feel tempted, at 
first glance, to believe them to be autochthones. 

" The Shemites, in fact, are, without contradiction, the race which 
has preserved the most distinct recollection of its origins. ISTobility 
among them consisting uniquely in descent by straight line from the 
patriarch or chief of the tribe, nowhere are genealogies so much 
prized, — nowhere are possessed of these any so long and so authentic. 
Genealogy is the essential form of all primitive histories among the 
Shemites (miSin)- The Toledoth of the Hebrews, notwithstanding 
their gaps, their contradictions, and the different re-handlings which 
they have suffered, are certainly those historical documents that 
cause us to approach nearest to the origin of humanity. Whence 
the remarkable fact, that other races, having lost their own primitive 
remembrances {souvenirs), have discovered nothing better to do than 
to hitch themselves on to Semitic recollections : so that the origins 
recounted in Genesis have become, in general opinion, the origins 
of mankind [at large !]. 

" These particular recollections of the Semitic race, which about 
the first eleven chapters of Genesis inclose, divide themselves into 
two very distinct parts. During the antediluvian phase, it is a 
fabulous geography, to which it is very difficult to attach a positive 
meaning : they are fictive genealogies, of which the degrees are 
filled, either by the names of ancient heroes, and perhaps by some 
divinities that are to be found among the other Semitic populations ; 
or by words expressive of ideas, and of which the signification was 
no longer perceived. They are fragments of confused recollections, 
wherein dreams are mixed up with realities, very nearly as in the 
remembrances of early infancy. [It is impossible to display more 
penetration than M. Ewald has towards interpreting these antique 
pages. (G-esehichte des Volkes Israel; I, p. 309 et suiv.) I must say, 



THE POLYGENISTS. 413 

however, that, in my opinion, M. Ewalcl yields a great deal too much 
to the temptation cf comparing the Hebraso-Semitic origines with 
Indo-Arian cosmogonies.]" 

Certainly the most philosophic of Semitic historians, the sage Ebn 
Khaldun, 24 has remarked, on national characteristics: "It is a curious 
circumstance, that the majority of the learned among the Muslims 
belonged to a foreign race: — very few persons of Arabian descent 
having obtained distinction in the sciences connected with the Law, 
or in those based upon human reason ; and yet the promulgator of 
the Law was an Arab, and the Kur'an, that source of so many 
sciences, an Arabic book." 

But perhaps the best-qualified living historiographer of Palestine, 
no less than the one most versed in the literature of his co-religionists, 
M. Munk, declares, in respect to the first chapter of Genesis : " This 
cosmogony is of an infantile simplicity. One must not see in it 
anything but a poem, — containing, indeed, some germs of science, 
but wherein imagination outbalances reflection ; and which it would 
be erroneous to judge from a scientific point of view." 23 

Finally, the most rigorous amongst archaeologists whom this gene- 
ration has admired, viz., Letronne, registered his sentiments on 
popular misconceptions of Hebrew literature, in the subjoined 
language : 

" There was a time, and this time is not yet very far from ourselves, 
in which all the sciences were compelled to find their origin in the 
Bible. It was the unique basis upon which they were permitted to 
rise ; and narrow limits had been fixed to their expansion. The 
astronomer, indeed, was allowed to observe the stars and to make 
almanacs ; but under the condition that the earth should remain at 
the centre of the universe, and that the sky should continue to be a 
solid vault, interspersed with luminous points : the cosmographer 
might draw up charts ; but he was obliged to lay down the principle 
that the earth was a plane surface, miraculously suspended in space, 
and held up by the will of God. If some theologers, less ignorant 
(than the majority), permitted the earth to assume a round form, it 
was under express stipulation that there should be no antipodes. The 
natural history of animals was bound to speak of the reproduction 
of those which had been saved in the Ark : history and ethnography 

24 Prolegomena; cited by MacGdckin de Slane in the Introd. of his translation of Ebn 
Khallikan's Kildb Wafeeat el-Adyean (Biographical Dictionary) — Oriental Translation 
Fund, London, 1843 ; II, p. i. 

25 Palestine, Univ. Pittor., Paris, 1845; p. 426: — compare Types of Mankind, pp. 561-6; 
and also Pott (Moses und David keine Geologen, Berlin, 1799, pp. 35-47), who proved, 1st, 
that Genesis I contains no revelation ; 2d, still less a revelation of geological facts ; 3d, in no 
manner a revelation made to Adam or to Moses. 



414 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

had for common basis the dispersion, over the surface of the earth, 
of the family of Noah. 

" The sciences had, therefore, their point of departure fixed and 
determinate ; and around each of them was traced a circle, out of 
which it was forbidden to them to issue, under pain of falling 
instantly beneath the dread censure of theologers, — who always 
possessed, at the service of their notions, whether good or bad, 
three irresistible arguments, viz., persecution, imprisonment, or the 
stake." 26 

Thus, then, the doctrine above advocated by the Humboldts is 
supported, at the present hour, by the most brilliant scholarship of 
the European continent — as might easily be proved through quota- 
tions from a hundred recent works. Into parliamentary-stifled 
England, even, the light is beginning to penetrate. For instance, 
the erudition of Mr. Samuel Sharpe none will contest. ■ To his 
Hellenic learning we owe the most critically-accurate translation of 
the New Testament 27 our language possesses : to him, also, Egypto- 
logy, among other great services, is indebted for the best "History 
of Egypt" 28 derived from classical sources. His remarks "on the 
Book of Genesis"* 3 bear directly on the subject before us : "We have 
no account of when this first of the Hebrew books was written, nor 
by whom. It has been called one of the books of Moses ; and some 
small part of it may have been written by that great lawgiver and 
leader of the Israelites. But it is the work of various authors and 
various ages. The larger part, in its present form, seems to have 
been written when the people dwelt in Canaan and were ruled over 
by judges, when Ephraim and Manasseh were chief among the 
tribes. But the author may have had older writings to guide him 
in his history. It is evident, also, in numerous places, that other 
writers, far more modern, have not scrupled to make their own 
additions. We must divide it into several portions, and each portion 
will best explain itself." 

Still more recently, an English biblical scholar, of no mean pre- 
tensions — whose gentlemanly temper and pleasant style inspire 
regrets that one so truthful should be compelled, owing to the 
dreary atmosphere of national prejudices which surrounds him, to 

26 "On the cosmographical Opinions of the Fathers of the Church, compared with the 
philosophical Doctrines of Greece" — Revue des Deux Mondes (3 me serie), Paris, 1834; I, 
p. 602. 

27 The New Testament translated from Griesbach's Text. London, 12rno, Moxon, 3d ed., 
1850. 

«* London, 8vo, Moxon, 1846. 

29 Sharpe, Historic Notes on the Books of the Old and New Testaments; London, 12mo., 
Moxon, 1854; p. 6. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 415 

fight, in the cause of plurality of human origins and of diversity of 
races, with his visor down — has put forth a volume 30 that augurs well 
for ethnological progress in Great Britain. The method of argu- 
ment, and the majority of facts advanced, will be new, however, 
only to the mere reader of English, — two hundred years having 
elapsed since Peyrerius 31 started a controversy which, on the conti- 
nent, has been prolific enough, down to Fabre d'Olivet and his pupil 
Raffinesque, 32 and still later to Klee. 33 More recently still, we find 
an apposite passage in Dr. August Zeune : 3i "It is known that, after 
the uprooting of the several Antilles by the Spaniards, Spanish 
ghostly divines palliated the introduction of negro slaves, for the 
purpose of working the mines, by the assumption that negroes, as 
the descendants of Ham (that is to say, the black), who was accursed 3S 
by his father ISToah; because Ham is named in a holy record as 
'slave of all slaves among his brethren.' * * * A well-known natu- 
ralist, now deceased, held the wondrous opinion that Ham, after his 
father had cursed him, became black from grief; and was the {stamm- 
vater) lineal progenitor of the negroes. Which of the three sons of 
Noah became Kalmucks ? Genesis indicates three (Menschenschop- 
fungen) races, at a much earlier day, in the children of Adam, of the 
Elohirn, and of the Nephilim, &c. ; so that Adam appears merely as 
the stem-father of the Iranian race, because Paradise also points to 
Armenia [quoting Schiller, uber die erste Menschengesellschaft nach 
der Mosaichen Urkunde~\. * * * Inasmuch as, however, according to 
the assertion of an admired dramatist, it has not yet occurred to any- 
body to sustain that all figs have sprung from a solitary primitive fig, 
even as little can any one admit the whole of mankind to be derived 
(abstammen) lineally from a single human pair. Wherever the con- 
ditions for life were found, there life has sprung forth." * * * 

Did the limited size of the present work permit (its previous space 
being engrossed by contributions of higher order than polemical dis- 
cussions upon the scientific value, in anthropology, of a single nation's 

80 Anonymous — The Genesis of the Earth and of Man: "A critical examination of the 
Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, chiefly with a view to the solution of the question, whether 
the Varieties of the Human Species be of more than one origin," &c. Edited by Reginald 
Stuart Poole, M. R. S. L., &c. Edinburgh, 12mo, Black, 1856. 

31 Prm-Adamilce, sive ezercitatio super Versibus XII ra0 , XIII"™, el XIV 10 , capitis quinti Epis- 
tolce D. Pauli ad Romanos, 1655. 

32 Langue Hebra'ique resliluee, Paris, 4to, 1815; "Cosmogonie de Moyse," pp. 55-8, 177-8.3, 
211-12: — and American Nations. 

33 Le Deluge, &c, Paris, 18mo, 1847; Chapter III, pp. 192-204. 

34 Uber Schadelbildung zur festern Begriindang der Menschenrassen, Berlin, 4to, 1846; 
pp. 2-4 

35 Similar anti-scriptural notions, so far as the Hebrew text is concerned, are entertained 
by Dr. Ward, Natural Hist, of Mankind (Society for promoting Christian knowledge), Lon- 
don, 12mo, 1849, p. 195. Compare Types of Mankind, voce KNAaN, pp. 495-8. 



416 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

literature), I would endeavor, whilst striving to emulate our anony- 
mous author's charity and good taste, to lay before his acumen proofs 
that, with motives most laudable and utility unquestionable, he has 
tried to reconcile two things which surpass reconciliation ; and, 
therefore, that his praiseworthy labors will, unhappily, satisfy nei- 
ther the exigencies of natural science, on the one hand, nor those of 
rigid Hebraism, of the modern school, on the other. Yet, as a spe- 
cimen of his propositions, I cannot refrain from the extract of a 
passage or two. 36 

" The narrative with which the Bible commences, ending with the 
third verse of the second chapter, is distinguished from that which 
immediately follows it, as the latter narrative also is from the third, 
not merely by the name given therein to Deity, but in several other 
respects. Its most remarkable characteristic is this : that it altoge- 
ther consists of a description of events which could not have been 
witnessed by any human being. [This is precisely the view above 
taken by the Humboldts.] Every one, therefore, who admits the 
truth of the Bible, whatever be his opinion of some other portions 
of it, must hold this narrative to be a revelation. 

"Now, we find that revelations of this kind, of which the subjects 
are events, were generally conveyed in representations to the sight; 
and hence, by the safest and most legitimate mode of judging, by 
comparing Scripture with Scripture [a sort of reasoning within a 
circle], we are led to the conclusion, that the narrative under our 
consideration is most probably the relation of a revelation by means of 
a vision, or rather a series of visions." * * * "The passages in the 
Bible which are commonly regarded as deciding the question re- 
specting the unity of the origin of the human species, demand a 
reverential caution of this kind [i. e., 'until we have weighed all 
the circumstances of the case' — antecedent paragraph~\ in him who 
examines them : for while these apparently indicate the origination 
of all mankind from a single pair of ancestors, there are others 
which apparently imply the existence of human beings not the 
offspring of Adam." * * * "If we regard Adam as the first of all 
mankind, this general view of the origin and development of lan- 
guage (Chev r . Bunsen's), supposing it to be admitted, obliges us to 
reduce a great part of the history of the book of Genesis to the 
category of faulty and vague traditions, as we have before ob- 
served." * * * 

BTow, with every deference, before exhibiting such contradictions 
to the eyes of the simple believer, and deducing therefrom several 
distinct lineages of the first men, would it not be the most prudent 

36 Genesis of Hie Earth, &c. (supra); pp. 1-2, 11-2, 19, 43-4, and 181-2. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 417 

and natural step, on the part of archaeologists, to ascertain previously 
the relative age, writer, and peculiarities, of each given document ? 
I cannot find that our author has taken these precautions ; but I 
read, — "the existence of pre-Adamites, without a revelation, is surely 
less wonderful than the fact that there have been, and still are, post- 
Adamites without it." * * * "These passages, though reconcilable 
with the general opinion respecting the origination of all mankind, 
seem rather to indicate the existence of nations not of the same race 
as the descendants of Adam, and not destroyed by the flood, and 
the partition of the lands of the former among certain colonies of 
the latter ; and an argument in favor of this inference may be drawn 
from the fact that the appellation here rendered 'the nations' 
('haggoylm'), in other instances, which are very numerous, gene- 
rally, and perhaps always, denotes the nations exclusive of the 
people of God, or of the Israelites ; wherefore it is often rendered, 
in the authorized version, 'the Gentiles' and 'the heathen.' If so, 
we may suppose that the confusion of tongues was a consequence, 
not the cause, of the dispersion from Babel. The whole of the 
tenth chapter of Genesis seems to be parenthetic." 

"Parenthetically," as applied to Xth Genesis, is an adverb which, 
so far as my limited reading of English biblical criticism extends, 
first occurs in a little work in some slight degree connected with my 
former studies. 36 It is gratifying to find its correctness now endorsed; 
and still more to perceive, that the admission of the aboriginal plu- 
rality of Human Races, sustained here in America by the Mortonian 
school, compels English scholars so to modify their interpretations 
of king James' version, as to make the diversity-doetvme harmonize 
with the Scriptures — or vice versa. For my own part, I congratulate 
both author and editor on their ingenious and ingenuous method of 
smoothing a pathway for the eventual recognition, in England, of 
our common polygenistic views. Orthodox in treatment, if passably 
heretical in issues — suaviter in modo, fortiter in re — " The Genesis of 
the Earth and of Man " will percolate unobtrusively into the Scottish 
as well as the English mind; inevitably and speedily awakening 
echoes, of surpassing benefit to Ethnology, which books of heavier 
calibre could not hope to rouse up, amid such intellectual conditions, 
in a century ! Its publishers, therefore, need not sigh with Byron, 

"For through a needle it easier for a camel is 
To pass, than this small cant-o into families." 

36 Olia Mgypliaca, London, 8vo., Madden, 1849; p. 141: — reprinted from Luke Bukkk's 
Ethnological Journal, London, 1848-9; and enlarged upon in Types of Mankind, Philadel- 
phia and London, 4to. and 8vo., 1854; pp. 466-556. 

s 27 



418 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

My final corroboration of the Hnmboldts' doctrine has to be drawn 
from the antipodes. Strange ! Whilst amid the civilizations of Eu- 
rope and America no independent Ethnologic serial has hitherto 
been able to survive, far less to remunerate its editor, mankind's 
most "proper study" has found, for some ten years, asylum and 
patronage at Singapore ! 37 

The merit is due to the genius, acquirements, and enterprise of 
an individual. If each of the eight zoological realms over which 
Agassiz distributes the various groups of mankind could boast of 
possessing its Mr. Logan, English science would not have to deplore 
the continued absence of that true spirit of ethnological investigation, 
coupled with perfect knowledge of the instruments to be employed, 
in nearly all but the Malayan. 

"Ethnology, in its etj'mological and narrowest sense, 38 is" — accord- 
ing to Logan's judgment — " the science of nations. It investigates 
the characteristics and history of the various tribes of man. The 
time seems to be already come when we may venture to define it 
more comprehensively as the science of the Human Race. From the 
investigation of the peculiarities and histories of particular tribes it 
rises to the conception of mankind as one race, and combining the 
truth which it gathers from every tribe, presents the whole as the 
science of the ethnic development of man. Those who may consider 
it premature to unite all nations in the idea of one race, can still 
accept the definition as indicating the science that results from a 
comparison of nations and their developments. Whether all men 
are descended from one stock or not, may be placed apart as an 
enquiry by itself, for those who think it worth while to pursue it in the 
present state of our knowledge. All are agreed that man is of one 
kind. If the millions who now people the earth had some hundreds 
of progenitors instead of a single pair, the science which the defini- 
tion comprises will remain unaffected." * * * * 

" I may state here, once for all, that ethnology can only be pur- 
sued as a scientific study by viewing the Hebraic religious develop- 
ment, and the Hebrew records, in their human aspect ; that is, as 
entering into the ethnic development of the Aramaean race and of 
the world. The supernatural element, and all the discussions respect- 
ing the limits of inspiration and the methods of interpretation, belong 
to theological science, and amongst all the discordant systems of the- 

" The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 1847-56; edited by J. R. 
Logian, Singapore. 

88 Journ. of the East. Indian Archip., vol. iv., 1850; "The Ethnology of the Indian Ar- 
chipelago ; embracing inquiries into the continental relations of the Indo-Pacific Islanders;" 
pp. 262, 263 note: and vol. vi., 1852 ; p. 678-9. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 419 

ology, that can only be true which is in harmony with the truths 
established by the observation of God's works." ****** 

" There is a deep-rooted source of error in Bunsen's ethnic specu- 
lations, 39 as in those of many other German philosophers, the 
Schlegels amongst them. It is assumed that the ethnology of the 
ancient Hebrews, as preserved in their sacred books, is a full reflec- 
tion of that of the world. I have, in another place, protested 
against this resumption, in ethnology, of the system that has im- 
peded the progress of eveiy branch of knowledge in succession, 
from Astronomy to Geology, that of endeavoring to bind down the 
human mind to the science of the ancient Hebrews. There has 
been no divine revelation of Ethnology any more than of Geology, 
Zoology, or any other purely-mundane science. 

" We might as justly refuse to recognize the existence of plants, 
animals, and planets, that are not mentioned in the Bible, as base 
our Ethnology on that of a people who were perhaps the least 
ethnologic of all great civilized nations that have existed. It is 
obvious that any ethnic science that does not embrace every tribe 
and language in the world must be needlessly imperfect, and that 
an exclusion of large sections of the human race must render it 
grossly so. Now it is certain that the Hebrews were ignorant of 

39 Alluding probably to the Chevalier's paper, "On the results of recent Egyptian re- 
searches," &c. — Three linguistic Dissertations ; Report of the British Assoc, for the Adv. of 
Science for 1847; London, 8vo., 1848: — because the Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal 
History (supra, note 16), 1854, could not have arrived at Singapore four years previously. 
And, while on this subject, let me repudiate the preposterously-misnamed Turanian theory, as 
applied to the Aborigines of America ! Conceding, to the learned Egyptologist and classi- 
cal scholar, the highest admiration for his acquirements in such arduous studies, it would 
have been prudent in him, perhaps, by withholding an endorsement of Schoolcraft's 
History of the Indian Tribes of North America (already five volumes, elephant quarto !), not 
to have exposed himself to the charge of discussing themes upon which he possesses little 
or no knowledge himself, and his authority, save in the capacity of recorder of the habits 
of such living tribes as official peregrinations afforded, but a trifle more. Chev. Bunsen 
labors under singular delusion, if he considers that this "great national work" [Outlines, II, 
pp. 111-13), carries any weight among men of science in this country. Americans feel 
proud, that their Legislature should have generously voted "$80,856.50" (cost of the first 
three volumes alone! see the North American Review, Boston, 1853, Art. XI, on Parts I, II, 
and III, p. 246), towards the promotion of knowledge ; Philadelphia may justly boast of 
the beautiful typography, splendid paper, and superb mechanical execution, of the work ; 
and it likewise contains several contributions of a high order from distinguished men: 
but I will frankly state, from personal acquaintance with scientific sentiment, during fifteen 
years that I have visited the best-educated States in the Union, that, in the opinion of those 
qualified to judge, a twenty-five-cent pamphlet could easily condense all the knowledge 
paraded, in these five big volumes, by its industrious author. With this respectful hint 
to Chev. Bunsen and Prof. Max-Muller, I postpone specifications to a more suitable occa- 
sion ; because, at present, with regard to this and other Washingtonian literary institutions, 
Nunquam concessa moveri Camarina (Virgil, Mn., Ill, 701). 



420 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

the very existence, not only of the extensive outlying provinces of 
America and Asianesia, but of the great mass of the tribes of the 
old world. They do not appear to have cultivated a knowledge of 
any non-Semitic language, and consequently their ethnic notions 
respecting some adjacent non-Semitic tribes must have been very 
obscure and erroneous. It may be doubted whether their know- 
ledge of the Africans extended beyond the Egyptians, and their 
southern Miotic neighbors, the Ethiopians. The European nations 
were unknown to them, save through some vague impressions 
respecting the sea-board tribes of the S. and ~W. coasts, received 
from the reticinent Phoenicians. Their knowledge of the numerous 
nations of northern, middle, and eastern Asia, was partial and 
obscure. They do not appear to have had a suspicion of the 
existence of the great civilized peoples of the East, the Arians and 
the Chinese, and they were as profoundly ignorant of the Dravirians, 
as they were of the Germans and the ancient British. 40 Nothing 
can more conclusively show the extremely narrow and isolated 
character of their ethnology, and their rigid seclusion from time 
immemorial in the Semitic civilization, than the fact that they had 
entirely lost, and had been unable by their observations to recover, 
the idea of barbarism. In this respect, their ethnology is far below 
that, not only of Herodotus and Manu, but of other Semitic nations; 
such as the Arabs, the Phoenicians, and, in all probability, the 
Babylonians, at least in their more civilized and commercial era. 
It is therefore surprising to see a writer like Bunsen founding his 
ethnology on that of Moses, which can only be correct as a partial 
picture of the races of S. E. Asia, and 1ST. E. Africa, as known to the 
Hebrews." 

« Types of Mankind, Part II, pp. 466-556; with its "Genealogical Tableau" of Xth 
Genesis, its "Map of the World as known to" the genesiacal writer; thoroughly confirmed 
the deductions here drawn by Mr. Logan : and every fresh archaeologist who examines this 
hoary document arrives at the same conclusions. I would now refer to researches unseen 
by me, or unpublished, when I projected my MSS. for the above work, at Mobile, in 1852. 
1st, Renan, Hist, des Langues Semitiques (supra), 1855, pp. 27-74, and 449-63: — 2d, 
Beegmann, Les peuples primitives de la race de Jafete. Esquisse ethno-genealogique et historique. 
Colmar, 8vo., 1853, p. 64: — 3d, Rawlinson, Notes on the Early History of Babylonia; 
London, 8vo., 1854, pp. 1-2, note: — 4th, Heywood's Von Bohlen, (supra, note 19), Introd. 
to the Booh of Genesis, London, 1855; II, pp. 210-54: — and 5th, as the most important, 
because devoted exclusively to analysis of this subject; August Knobel, Hie Volkerlafel der 
Genesis. Elhnographische Untersuchungen ; Giessen, 8vo., 1850. I was not aware of this 
masterly book, until many months after the publication of my own studies in " Types of 
Mankind." It was subsequently indicated to me at Paris, by my valued friend M. Renan. 
With no small gratification, I afterwards discovered that Dr. Knobel's results and my own were 
always similar, often identical. Compare pp. 9, 13, 137-7, 167, 170, 339-52, for particular 
instances, with the same points discussed in "Types." 



THE POLYGENISTS. 421 

Such are some of the true principles for embracing, in these in- 
quiries, Hebrew ethnography, as an inestimable, but, in reality, a 
very minor part of the World's ethnology : at the same time that, 
through the above extracts, we perceive but a small portion of the 
uncertainties and perils, that beset this new and ill- appreciated 
study. — "And yet," indignantly, but most righteously exclaims 
Luke Burke, " And yet this is the science on which every man is 
competent to pass an opinion with oracular emphasis ; the science to 
which missionaries dictate laws, and which pious believers find 
written out, ready to their hands, in the book of Genesis. The 
science, in a word, which a whole tribe of comparative philologists, 
with a fatuity almost inconceivable, have coolly withdrawn from the 
control of zoology, and settled to their own infinite satisfaction, as 
per catalogue of barbarian vocabularies." The really learned are 
perplexed with doubt, or appalled with difficulty : the true naturalist 
approaches with diffidence, or states his opinion without dogmatism 
or tenacity ; but the theologian is perfectly at home, and has 
arranged every thing long ago. The land is his by right Divine, 
his own peculiar appanage ; and with the authority of a master he 
peremptorily decides, that a science, to which even the distant future 
will scarcely be able to do proper justice, shall receive its laws and 
inspirations from the remote and ridiculous past." 42 

Having thus fortified what I deem to be the " ultima ratio," above 
put forth on Human Origins, by the brothers Humboldt conjointly, 
it may be interesting to dissect some sentences of that magnificent 
paragraph ; in order that we may not unwittingly ascribe to Wil- 
helm, the philologist, the more decided opinions of his brother Alex- 
ander, whose universality of science precludes special classification. 

And first, it seems ominous to the "Unity-doctrine, that the most 
brilliant philologer of his day should have left a manuscript, " On 
the Diversity of Languages and of Nations." 

This manuscript, however, being unpublished, no positive deduc- 
tion can be drawn from its mere title ; but the treatise must possess 
some elements distinguishing it from the elder work, long honored 
by the scientific world : "Uber die Verschiedenheit der menschlichen 
Sprachbaues;" On the Diversity of Structure of Human Languages, — 
contained in Wilhelm von Humboldt's researches into the "Kawi- 

41 This applies especially to an inexhaustible, learned, and laborious ethnological "cata- 
logue-maker," Dr. Latham. Vide the Brighton Examiner, October 2, 1855 — for a critique 
by Mr. Luke Burke, of "Dr. Latham's Lecture on 'Ethnology.'" 

42 Charleston Medical Journal and Review, Charleston, S. C, vol. XI, No. 4, July 1856 — ■ 
"Strictures," &c, by Luke Burke, Esq., Editor of the London Ethnological Journal — 
pp. 457-8. 



422 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

tongue, in the island of Java;" 43 elsewhere cited in Cosmos. One 
of these passages is noteworthy, not only for the law it enunciates, 
but also for the variety of rendering it has received: 

German Original. 14 — -"Die Sprache umschlingt mehr, als sonst etwas im Menschen, 
das ganze Geschlecht. Gerade in ihrer volkertrennenden Eigenschaft vereinigt sie durch 
das Wechselverst'andnisz frenidartiger Rede die Verschiedenheit der Individualitaten, ohne 
ihrer Eigenthiimlichkeit Eintrag zu rhun. (A. a 0. S. 427.) " 

Sabine's Translation. 45 — "Language, more than any other faculty, binds mankind 
together. Diversities of idiom produce, indeed, to a certain extent, separation between 
nations ; but the necessity of mutual understanding occasions the acquirement of foreign 
languages, and reunites men without destroying national peculiarity." 

Otte's Translation. 46 — "Language, more than any other attribute of mankind, binds 
together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties, it certainly seems to separate 
nations ; but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together, on 
the other hand, without injuring individual national characteristics." 

Guigniaut's Translation. 4 ' — " Le langage, plus qu'aucune autre faculty de 1'homme, 
forme un faisceau de l'espece humaine tout entlere. E semble, au premier abord, se'parer 
les peuples comme les idiomes ; mais c'est justement la necessity de s' entendre re'ciproque- 
ment dans une langue etrangere qui rapproche les individualite's, en laissant a, chacune son 
originality propre." 

That the organs of speech enahle mankind to interchange their 
thoughts, is one of those truisms to question which would be absurd. 
Speech is an inherent attribute of the "genus homo ;" just as mewing 
is to the feline, and barking to the canine : hut it does not follow 
that, because a Lapp might by some chance acquire G-uarani, a 
Tasmanian English, an Arab Korean, a Mandingo Madjar, an Esqui- 
mau Tamul, or, what is more possible, that a thorough-bred Israeli- 
tish emigrant from ancient Chaldea (his own national tongue being 
forgotten) might now be found speaking any one of these tongues 
as his own vernacular, — it does not follow, I repeat, either that 
humanity is indivisible into groups of men linguistically, as well as 
physically and geographically, distinct in origin ; or that "Wilhelm 
von Humboldt thought so : any more than because u felis catus 
Angorensis" of Turkish Angora "mews" like "felis brevieaudata" 
of Japanese Nippon, and both these animals like "felis domestica 
ccerulia" of Siberian Tobolsk, 48 that these three cats are necessarily 

43 Ueber die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java, Berlin, 4to, 1836. Cardinal Wiseman fre- 
quently quotes it eulogistically in his Connection between Science and revealed Religion. 

44 Op. cit. {supra, p. 407), p. 493. 

45 Supra (note 10) — Cosmos, I, p. cxv, note 443. 

46 Supra (note 6) — Cosmos, I, p. 359, note. 

47 Supra (note 1) — Cosmos, I, pp. 579-80, note 43. 

48 Not being myself a zoologist, it may be well to shield assertions, on this cai-question, 
with the authority of one who is. Prof. S. S. Haldeman remarks: "Thus, the cat 
mummies of Egypt were said to be identical with the modern Felis domestica ; and such 
was the general opinion, until the discovery, of Dr. Riippell, of the genuine analogue of the 
embalmed species, in the Felis maniculata of Noubia. I believe Professor Bell to be 



THE POLTGENISTS. 423 

of the same blood lineage, identical species, or proximate geogra- 
phical origin: notwithstanding that, amongst other "philosophical 
aphorisms," Bunsen — with whom philology and ethnology are syno- 
nymes through which we shall recover, some day, the one primeval 
language spoken by the first pair, who are now accounted to be 
"beatorum in coelis" — declares, "that physiological inquiry [one, as 
we all know, completely outside of the range of his high education 
and various studies], although it can never arrive by itself at any 
conclusive result, still decidedly inclines, on the whole, towards the 
theory of the unity of the human race."! 49 I have no hopes, in 
view of his eai'ly education and present time of life, that the accom- 
plished Chevalier will ever modify such orthodox opinion ; but 
readers of the present volume may perhaps discover some reasons 
for differing from it. 

But, even under the supposition that Wilhelm von Humboldt, in 
his now-past generation, when writing " on the Diversity of Lan- 
guages and Peoples," may have speculated upon the possibility of 
reducing both into one original stock, it will remain equally certain, 
that, in such assumed conclusion, he was biassed by no dogmatical 
respect for myths, fiction, or pretended teadition (ubi supra) ; and 
furthermore that, if he grounded his results on the " Kawi Sprache," 
he inadvertently built upon a quicksand ; as subsequent researches 
have established. 

Amongst scientific travellers and enlightened Orientalists of Eng- 
land, the venerable author of the "History of the Indian Archipe- 
lago " has long stood in the foremost rank. His speciality of inves- 
tigation occupied — " a period of more than forty years, twelve of 
which were passed in countries of which the Malay is the vernacular 
or the popular language, and ten in the compilation of materials ;" — 
of which a recent 50 "Dissertation" embodies not merely the pre- 
cious ethnographical issue ; but, through his method of analysis and 
depth of logic, superadded to vast practical knowledge of his theme 
— combined with sterling common sense, its author has produced 
what, in my individual opinion, must become the model text-book, 

correct in deciding that Felis domestica can neither be referred to this species, nor to the 
Felis catus found wild in the forests of Europe." {Recent Freshwater Mollusca, which are 
common to North America and Europe, Boston Jour, of Nat. Hist., Jan. 1844, pp. 6-7.) 

48 Outlines (supra, p. 102), I, p. 46. " Multse terricoiis linguae, coelestibus una," is another 
way of stating such axiom. How did this last writer know that people do talk one language 
in heaven? Can he show us whether the "dead" have speech at all? During some gene- 
rations, the Sorbonne, at Paris, discussed, in schoolboys' themes, a coherent enigma, viz., 
An sancti resurgant cum intestinis — not a less difficult problem for such youths' pedagogues ! 

50 A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, with a preliminary Dissertation ; 2 
vols. 8vo., London, 1852. Our citations are from I. pp. 35-6, 128-9. 



424 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

to sincere students of comparative philology. Here science feels 
itself relieved from verbal transcendentalism, so sublime that it is 
meaningless, in Avhich the hybrid school of Anglo-German ethnolo- 
gists delights : and this volume, at any rate, does not " teach gram- 
mar as if there were no language, geography as if there were no 
earth." Mr. Crawfurd, — unlike some of his English contemporaries 
who, grouping into little catalogues all the tongues known or un- 
known upon earth, of which it is materially impossible that any one 
man's brain, or lifetime, could gather even the rudiments, proclaim 
that " philology proves the unity" of human origins — Mr. Crawfurd 
thoroughly understands his subject, and writes so that even ourselves 
can understand him. 

" There exists in Java, as in Northern and Southern India, in Cey- 
lon, in Birma, and Siam, an ancient recondite language, but it is not, 
as in those countries, any longer the language of law and religion, 
but a mere dead tongue. This language goes under the name of 
Kawi, a word which means 'narrative,' or 'tale,' and is not the spe- 
cific name of any national tongue. Most probably it is a corruption 
of the Sanscrit kavya, ' a narration.' In Java there are found many 
inscriptions, both on brass and stone, the great majority of which, 
on examination, are found to consist of various ancient modifications 
of the present written character." *******<< Some writers 
have supposed the Kawi to be a foreign tongue, introduced into Java 
at some unknown epoch, but there is no ground for this notion, as 
its general accordance with the ordinary language plainly shows. 
Independent of its being the language of inscriptions, it is, also, that 
of the most remarkable literary productions of the Javanese, among 
which, the most celebrated is the Bratayuda, or ' war of the descend- 
ants of Barat,' a kind of abstract of the Hindu Mahabarat." * * * 
(probable date, about a. d. 1195). In it, "near 80 parts in 100, or 
four-fifths of the Kawi, are modern Javanese." ***** ""When, 
therefore, it is considered that the Kawi is no longer the language 
of law or religion, but merely a dead language, it is not difficult to 
understand how it comes to be so little understood ; while, in deci- 
phering inscriptions, the difficulty is enhanced by an obsolete cha- 
racter." * * * * "Kawi is only an antiquated Javanese." 

" The illustrious philosopher, linguist, and statesman, the late Ba- 
ron William Humboldt, has, in his large work on the Kawi of Java, 
expressed the opinion that the Tagala of the Philippines is the most 
perfect living specimen of that Malayan tongue, which, with other 
writers, he fancies to have been the parental stock from which all 
the other tongues of the brown race in the Eastern Archipelago, the 
Philippines, the islands of the Pacific, and even the language of Ala- 



THE FOLTGENISTS. 425 

dagascar, have sprung. I cannot help thinking that this hypothesis, 
maintained with much ingenuity, must have originated in this emi- 
nent scholar s practical unacquaintance ivith any one language of the 
many which came under his consideration ; and that, had he possessed 
the necessary knowledge, the mere running over the pages of any 
Philippine dictionary would have satisfied him of the error of his 
theory. I conclude, then, by expressing my conviction that, as far as 
the evidence yielded by a comparison of the Tagala, Bisaya, and 
Pampanga languages with the Malay and Javanese goes, there is no 
more ground for believing that the Philippine and Malayan languages 
have a common origin, than for concluding that Spanish and Portu- 
guese are Semitic languages, because they contain a few hundred 
words of Arabic, or that the Welsh and Irish are of Latin origin, because 
they contain a good many words of Latin ; or that Italian is of Gothic 
origin, because it contains a far greater number of words of Teutonic 
origin than any Philippine language does of Malay and Javanese." 51 

How Crawfurd disposes of the Malayan tongues, segregating this 
group victoriously from all others, has been previously indicated in M. 
Maury's chapter, [ante. pp. 79-80]. Our purpose is answered by 
publishing, in the said chapter, proofs that linguistic science has pro- 
gressed considerably since 1836, when the disquisition on the "Kawi- 
sprache" was written ; and that, while to Wilhelm von Humboldt is 
gratefully accorded the highest position in philology as it stood 20 
years ago, it is injustice to the memory of a great man to quote his 
authority as tantamount to a finality, when he himself (were he now 
alive) would have kept pace with the latest discoveries in science, as 
when, — to his honor be it recognized — -he was the first qualified 
critic, out of France, to welcome and promote Champollion-le-Jeune's 
hieroglyphical decipherings ; 52 unappalled himself, if others were not, 
at the storm which ignorance and superstition everywhere had raised 
against the immortal Frenchman. 

It is to the surviving brother that Ideler dedicates his work — 
"Alexandra ab Humboldt, German orum quotquot fuere, sunt, erunt- 
que decori sacrum." In his own person, the nonogenerian patriarch 

61 See also The Westminster Review, No. xviii, April, 1856; London ed., Art. iii. on "Types 
of Mankind;" pp. 373-5. In thanking the reviewer for the fairness of his critique upon 
our work, let me point out two oversights contained in his obliging article: 1st. — (p. 361) 
Prof. Agassiz never created a " Hottentot" realm ; but merely included a Hottentot Fauna 
in his "African" realm (see Types, p. lxxvii.) : 2d. — (p. 367) by referring, as I have done, 
to Morton's Illustrated System of Human Anatomy (p. 151), he will find that the Doctor 
wrote "a climate as cold as Ireland," not Iceland: so that there remains no "double mis 
take," except the pair above committed by the reviewer. 

52 Ideler, Hermapion (supra, note 17) ; chap. XXXI, " Lettre de M. le Baron Guillaume 
de Humboldt a M. Champollion." 



426 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of science seems likely to realize Flouren's proposed law, 53 viz : that 
the true length of human life should not fall below one hundred years : 
and certainly there lives no man to whom mankind owe a more fer- 
vent tribute of good wishes. Others are better qualified than the 
present writer to show how ceaselessly Baron Alexander de Hum- 
boldt steps onward, day by day, as leader in multitudinous fields of 
Natural Science ; but should Egyptology be taken as the criterion of 
his ever-progressing knowledge, then we need, in order to plant 
some pickets along tbe route, but to re-open his Cosmos?* and to 
peruse some of Lepsius's 55 and Brugsch's writings. 56 

Nevertheless, supposing that we take a step backwards of some 47 
years from this day, when Baron de Humboldt stood already at the 
meridian of his glorious life, and open the beautiful Introduction 
with which, in 1810, he prefaced the "Vues des Cordilleras, 57 we 
perceive how, at that day — one generation and a half ago, — he felt 
overjoyed at having then lived to witness the appearance of the great 
French work, the "Description de l'Egypte," fruit of Napoleon 
Bonaparte's eastern campaigns of 1778-1800, — which grand folios, 
except for architectural designs of ancient, and excellent views and 
disquisitions of modern Egypt, have, since Champollion's era, 1822- 
32, become, arehseologically speaking, almost so much waste paper. 
Yet, at that time (to most men under fifty, in this our XLXth 
century, remote day), Alexander von Humboldt had already arrived 
at the following philosophical conclusions about the " unity of the 
human species." 

"Le problem e de la premiere population de l'Amerique n'est plus 
du ressort de l'histoire, que les questions sur l'origine des plantes et 
des animaux et sur la distribution des germes organiques ne sont du 
ressort des science naturelles. L'histoire, en remontant aux epoques 
les plus reculees [which, in A. D. 1810, meant only to about 1000 years 
before Christ; inasmuch as those revelations, on some 8000 years pre- 
viously to the latter era, derived since from the petroglyphs of the Nile, 
the Euphrates, and the Tigris, had not been dreamed of, much less com- 
menced'], nous montre presque toutes les parties du globe occupees 
par des hommes qui se croient aborigines, parce qu'ils ignorent 
leur filiation. Au milieu d'une multitude de peuples qui se sont 

53 De la Longimlc Surname et de la quantite de Vie sur le globe; Paris, 12mo, 1855, p. 86, 
viz: that the natural length of animal life is frve times the time it takes to "unite the bones 
with their epiphyses;" which process, in man, takes effect at about 20 years of age. 

M OiWs Transl., II, pp. 124-8. 

K Briefe aus JEgypien, JEthiopien, §c, Berlin, 1852; "Vorwort." 

66 Reiseberichte aus JEgypien, Berlin, 1855; "Vorwort;" and Grammalica Demotica, 1855. 

6' Hcmboldt et Bomplakd, Voyage, Atlas Pittoresque, Paris, folio, 1810. 



THE POL YGEISTISTS. 427 

succedes et meles les uns aux autres, il est impossible de reconnoitre 
avec exactitude la premiere base de la population, cette couclie 
primitive au dela de laquelle commence le domaine des traditions 
cosmogoniques. 

"Les nations de l'Amerique, a l'exception de celles qui avoisinent 
le cercle polaire, forment une seule race caraeterisee par la conforma- 
tion du crane, par la couleur de la peau, par l'extreme rarete de la 
barbe, et par des cbeveux plats et lisses. La race americaine a des 
rapports tres-sensibles avec celle des peuples mongoles qui renferme 
les descendans des Hiong-nu, connus jadis sous le nom de Huns, les 
Kalkas, les Kalmucks, et les Bourattes. Des observations recentes 
ont meme prouve que non seulement les babitants a, Unalaska, mais 
aitssi plusieurs peuplades de l'Amerique meridionale, indiquent par des 
caracteres ostCologiques de la tete, un passage de la race americaine 
[not across the Pacific nor the Atlantic, but in physiological gradation], 
a. la race mongole. Lorsqu'on aura mieux etudie les bommes bruns 
de l'Afrique et cet essaim de peuples qui babitent 1'interieure et le 
nord-est de l'Asie, que des voyageurs systematiques designent vague- 
ment sous les noms de Tartars et de Tscboucles, les races cancasienne, 
mongole, americaine [this last group of humanity was explored 30 years 
later, and to Baron de Humboldt's satisfaction, 58 by Morton, in his 
"Crania Americana"], malaye et negre paroitront moins isolees 
[Morton's school now think the contrary established], et Ton recomioitra, 
dans cette grande famille du genre bumain, un seul type organique 
modifie par des circonstances qui nous resteront peut-etre a jamais 
inconnues." * * * "JSTous ne connaissons jusqu'ici aueun idiome de 
l'Amerique qui, plus que les autres, semble se lier a un des groupes 
nombreux de langue asiatiques, africaines, on europeennes." 59 

Indeed, as tbe same illustrious writer says elsewbere, 60 these dis- 
cussions, which we call neiv, "sur l'unite de l'espece humaine et de 
ses deviations d'un type primitif," and about the peopling of America, 
agitated the minds of its first Spanish historians, Acosta, Oviedo, 
G-arcia, &c, — on all which consult the learned compendium of Dr. 
McCulloh. 61 

As a final illustration of tbe eagle-eye with which Humboldt seizes 
each discoveiy of physical science as it is made, the German and 
French editions of Kosmos itself furnish a happy instance. The first 

63 See the Baron's congratulatory letter to Dr. Morton, in Types of Mankind, pp. xxxiv-v. 
69 Vues des Cordilleras, pp. vii-viii, x. 

60 JSxamen critique de I'histoire de la Qeographie du Nouveau Continent el des progris de 
V Aslronomie naulique aux 15 me et 16 me siecles, Paris, 1836, I, "Considerations," pp. 5, G. 

61 Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America, 
Baltimore, 1829, "Introduction," and passim. 



428 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

volume of the former appeared in Germany during April, 1843. "II 
fut considere (says M. Faye,) 62 comme l'expression fidele de 1'etat des 
sciences physiques." In that year but 11 planets were known to 
astronomers. But, by 1846, on the issue of the French version, M. 
Hencke, of Driessen, having discovered another, it became incumbent 
upon its translator to count 12 : — "Mais les appreciations de M. de 
Humboldt n'en ont recu aucune atteinte ; au contraire, cette decou- 
verte leur apporte une force nouvelle, une verification de plus." How 
many more have turned up since, I do not know. Prof. Riddell 
already enumerated " thirty- eight known asteroids, 63 at New Orleans 
in February 1856. Can any one suppose that Baron de Humboldt, 
residing in the centre of royal science at Potsdam, is not at this hour 
more precisely informed ? 

Consequently, if my individual convictions happen to differ from the 
ethnological doctrine of Baron de Humboldt, I wish critics to compre- 
hend that I am fully aware of the enormous disparity existing between 
our respective mental capacities and attainments ; and whilst, on my 
side, the consciousness of his superiority serves to increase my admi- 
ration, I cannot but congratulate myself that, — however other great 
authorities may be found to agree with, or to contradict him, on the 
question of human monogenism or polygenism — in rejecting "myths," 
"fiction," and "pretended tradition," I find myself merely and 
implicitly following in the wake of Alexander von Humboldt. 

So high, indeed, is my individual reverence for the authority of 
Humboldt, that, in the present essay, my part chiefly confines itself 
to setting forth his ethnological opinions in juxtaposition to other 
great men's; leaving the unprejudiced reader to form his own judg- 
ment, as to the side on which scientific truth holds the preponde- 
rance. With the ethics, said to be involved in such problem, I do 
not particularly concern myself: my own notions in this matter 
being similar to those of my lamented collaborator Dr. Henry S. 
Patterson f* viz : that, inasmuch as the religious dogma of man- 
kind's Unity of origin has never yet instigated the different races 
of men to act toward each other like "brothers," it might still 
occur, in a distant future, that, wben the antagonistic doctrine of 
Diversity shall be recognized as attesting one of Nature's organic 
laws, such change of theory may possibly superinduce some altera- 
tion of practice; and then that men of distinct lineages may become, 
as I desire, more really-humane in their mutual intercourse. If under 
the monogenistic hypothesis, mankind cannot well be worse off 

62 Cosmos, Tr. e<J., 1846, " Avertissement du Traducteur," pp. iii. 

63 Address read before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, 1856, p. 2. 

64 "Memoir of Samuel George Morton," Types of Mankind, pp. li — lii. 



THE POL YGE NISTS. 429 

than they are now, some hopes of eventual melioration may, per- 
haps, be indulged in, by sustainers of the polygenistic point of view. 

Humboldt's language on this question admits of no equivoque. — 
"But, in my opinion, more powerful reasons militate in favor of the 
unity of the human species." * * * "In sustaining the unity of 
the human species, we reject, as a necessary consequence, the dis- 
tressing distinction of superior and of inferior races:" — and he 
terminates by citing his brother's beautiful aphorism 65 — "'An idea 
that reveals itself athwart history, whilst extending daily its salutary 
empire, an idea which, better than any other, proves the fact so often 
contested, but still oftener misunderstood, of the general perfecti- 
bility of the species, is the idea of humanity.' " 

I am unconscious, certainly, of a disposition to deny the historical 
fact last indicated ; neither do I question the improvableness of every 
race of man, each in the ratio of its own grade of organization, nor 
doubt the beneficial influence of such modern belief wherever it 
can be implanted : but, not on that account do I consider a Tasma- 
nian, a Fuegian, a Kalmuk, an Orang-benua, or a Bechuana, to 
descend from the same blood lineage as the noblest of living 
Teutons: — -whose loftiness of soul gives utterance to an "idea," 
such as that which no education could instil into the brains of the 
above-named five, among many other races. The very idea itself 
is purely " Caucasian ;" and as such, together with true civilization, 
serves the more strongly to mark distinctions of mental organism, 
amongst the various groups of historical humanity. 

To the second proposition, recognizing, with De Gl-obineau, 66 and 
with Pott, 67 the existence of "superior and of inferior races" as 
simply a fact in nature, I will submit some objections as we proceed: 
at the same time that I can perceive nothing "depressing," " cheer- 
less," or " distressing," in any fact, humanly comprehensible, of the 
Creator's laws, inscrutable to human reason though they may yet be. 

But it is the accuracy of the first assertion, viz: "the unity of the 
human species," that, without some ventilation of the Baron's pre- 
cise meaning, I cannot accept ; for the same reasons which, in the 
Parisian discussion before alluded to {supra, p. 404), M. d'Eichthal 
adduces in his report to the Societe Ethnologique. 

And here, in order to meet ungenerous or misapplied criticism, 

65 A. de Humboldt, Cosmos, French ed. ; I, pp. 423, 430 ; and p. 579, note 43 ; quoting 
W. de Humboldt, On the Kawi tongue, III, p. 426. Compare Olle's Iransl., I, pp. 352, 358 ; 
with Sabine's, pp. 351, 355-6. 

66 Inegalite des Races humaines (supra, p. 188). 

67 Die Ungleichheit menschlicher Rassen hauptfdchlich vom Sprachwissenschaftlichen Sland- 
punkte, &c— Halle, 8to, 1856. 



430 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

let me mention, once for all, that, wherever memory recalls to mind 
a given writer who, in the printed emission of his thoughts, has 
sustained views hearing directly on a theme hefore me (of sufficient 
merit to demand re-perusal), it is my habit always to reproduce his 
ideas in his own words, in preference to giving those ideas as my 
own. Apart from literary honesty (the violation of which is looked 
upon by most litterateurs as a venial offence), there accrues positive 
advantage from such practice ; because, "a motion being seconded," 
the reader is thereby presented with two or more men's opinions in 
lieu of one. It is to the late Letronne I owe this system. Calling 
one day upon him, in 1845, at the Archives, in Paris, to ask for some 
information relative to his Cours d' archeologie egyptienne, at the 
College de France, where my attendance was ever punctual, 63 he 
continued, during our long interview, to tumble down, from his 
well-stocked library, work after work, whence, whilst talking, he 
made frequent extracts. Struck with his incessant laboriousness, 
curiosity bade me observe, that the subject must be very important, 
to require so many references. "Au contraire," he exclaimed, 
"tres insignifiiant : c'est que j'ai a faire une petite reponse a M. 
* * *, de L'Institut." To my remark, that, for such purpose, there 
hardly needed so much expenditure of time and fatigue on the part 
of a Letronne, he favored me with the following characteristic 
observation. Said he, in effect — whenever he happened to remember 
that an author, ancient or modern, had treated on the topic in hand, 
he always quoted him — 1st, because this process established such 
author's priority; 2d, because it proved that he (Letronne) was 
conversant with the literature of such subject: and, — when I sug- 
gested that he might, in consequence, be deemed, by strangers, to 
be a mere compiler — he broke forth with, " Compilateur ! If I had 
nothing new to say, over and above all these citations, why should I 
write?" This lesson, I trust, was not lost upon me; wherefore my 
extracts are continued. 

"M. Schcelcher 69 [one of the members, no less than the most cele- 
brated of French abolitionists] has, moreover, told you himself that 
he professes the principle (let us rather say the dogma) of the equal- 
ity, complete and absolute, of the human races. To him, in view 
of this great faith of unity, all shades, gradations, distinctions, which 
may exist between different races, are as if they were not. He does 
not precisely deny them ; but he attenuates them as much as possible, 
he leaves them in the shade, he takes no account of them." 

68 Otia JEgyptiaca, Dedication, and pp. 16, 23-4, 26, 77. 

69 Author, amid various works, of a very correct estimate of modern Egypt, as it appeared 
politically about 1844, and socially to the present hour. 



THE POLTGENISTS 431 

"We do not fear," then comments M. d'Eichthal, "to reproach 
our colleague with exaggerations of this doctrine. His opinions, if 
taken in all their rigor [why not, prima facie, those of Humboldt 
also], would attain to nothing less than the annihilation of ethnology 
itself ; because ethnology is but the classification of races according 
to the characteristical differences that distinguish them. Efface or 
throw aside these differences, and the name of ethnological science 
has no longer any meaning. Even the question at this moment 
occupying us ceases to possess any value ! All human races being 
supposed to be one, every discussion, relative to those characters 
which might distinguish them, becomes ipso facto superfluous." 

It appears to me that, in M. d'Eichthal's argument, the dilemma 
is well put. Where, in fact, can be the utility of ethnological in- 
quiries, if (say, in America) we set forth with an Anglicized Hebrew 
myth — which has become metamorphosed, amongst Indo-European 
nations, into traditionary credence as to fact — that all mankind 
descend, in a straight line, from "a single pair"? Except as 
orthodox repellers of free investigation, the unity-men have really 
no place in ethnological science ; unless, with Alexander von Hum- 
boldt, they use the term "unity" in a philosophical (or "parliament- 
ary") sense, and not in the one currently understood by theologers. 



PAET I. 

To ascertain the likelihood of the stability of such views, it will 
be convenient to classify the acceptations in which different authors 
use the term "Unity," as applicable to Mankind, into three cate- 
gories, viz : — 

A. — Unity as a theological dogma. 

B. — ■ Unity as a zoological fact. 

C. — Unity as a moral, or metaphysical, doctrine. 

With regard to the first two (A and B), it is not often easy to 
separate, into just proportions, the value attached to either by many 
able writers, — so completely have they fused these two distinct ideas 
into one mass. The majority, setting forth with a preconceived 
notion (derived from an early education that they do not possess 
the moral courage to analyze, still more rarely to shake off), that all 
the races of men descend from a primordial male and female pair, 
misnamed in English "Adam and Eve," 70 have, often unconsciously, 

» Hebrew Text, Genesis II, 23. Here occur two distinct words, (of which the contrast is 



432 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

perceived in nature nothing but the reflex of their own mental 
assumption ; and, as a consequence, have seized only upon analogies 
confirmatory of their own sentimental bias ; discarding altogether, 
or leaving out of sight, those natural and historical facts that mili- 
tate against it. 

Foremost and highest, if not perhaps the earliest, among these, 
stand two contemporaries, Blumenbach 71 and Zimmermann ; the 
former of whom is justly acknowledged to be the founder of anthro- 
pological science, as well as of cranioscopy. The latter may be 
reckoned among the first who established correct principles of 
animal geographical distribution. 

It is not, however (as usually supposed), in his large Decades 
Oraniorum, that Blumenbach gave free utterance to his opinions. 
These are contained in sundry duodecimos, some of which have 
passed through three improved editions. Those that I first read 
belonged once to Cuvier, and were indicated to me by the accom- 
plished Librarian of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, my friend M. 
Lemercier. The following extract sums up his argument upon 
human "Unity," 72 which he had previously formulated into a doc- 
trine — " JJnica saltern est totius generis humani Species." His opening 
sentence sufficiently establishes the mental preoccupations I have 
signalized above. 

" Ardua quidem, sed cum ad vindicandam Sacri codicis fidem, turn 
ob lucem quam universse generis humani imo et reliquas naturali 
historise impertit, utilissima et dignissima disquisitio. Malitia qui- 
dem, negligentia et novitatis studium posteriori opinioni favebant. 
Plures erim humani generis species inde a Juliani Imperatoris tem- 
poribus [Opera, p. 192) iis egregie arridebant [i.e., Symon Tyssot, 

effaced in king James' version) for "man," viz: A-DaM and AISA: whilst again the female 
AISAaH, just formed out of " the-red-man's" rib, does not receive the name of KAaiUaH 
(life) — vulgarice KAaVaH, and still more vulgarly "Eve" in English — until Chap. Ill, v. 
20. See some mythological analogies in Types of Mankind, pp. 563, 573. 

n With exquisite taste, my friend, Mr. J. Barnard Davis, has resuscitated the portrait 
of the illustrious German, and, flanked on a medallion by that of his successor Dr. Morton, 
it adorns that beautiful and truly-scientific work, Crania Britannica, London, 1856; the 
first decade of which I owe to its author's kind regard. Appertaining properly to the 
specialties of our collaborators Dr. Meigs and Prof. Leidy, I refrain from comments on a 
great hook which, vindicating the rights of Anatomy to priority of respect in the study of 
mankind, will do good service in rescuing ethnology from a too-excliTsive reliance upon 
Philology, — as understood, I mean to say, by Anglo-German monogenists ; but not when, as 
in M. Maury's chapter I of this volume, it is shown how perfectly true philology attains to 
the same philosophical results as all other sciences bearing upon man. 

72 Blumenbach, De Generis Humani varietate nativa, Gottingse, 1781; pp. 31, 47, — this 
being the 2d edition of a paper printed 5 years previously ; and afterwards considerably 
enlarged and altered in a 3d edition, Gottingoe, 1795. 



THE POLYGEKISTS. 433 

and Voltaire] quorum Sacri codicis fidem suspectam reddere intere- 
rat. Facilius porro erat (Ethiopes aut Arnericse imberbes incolas 
prinio statim intuitu pro diversis speciebus habere, quam in corporis 
humani structuram inquirere, anatomicos et itinerum nurnerosos 
auctores consulere, horumque fidera aut levitatem studiose perpen- 
dere, e naturalis historise universo ambitu parallela conferre exempla, 
tumque demum judicium ferre varietatis caussas scr atari. Ita v. c. 
famosus ille Theophrastus Paracelsus (lepidum caput !) primus ni 
fallor capere non potuit quomodo Ameriaani 73 ut reliqui bominis ab 
Adamo genus ducere possunt, ideoque ut brevi se expediret negotio 
duos Adamos a Deo creates statuit, Asiaticum alteram, alteram 
Americanum (De philosoph. occulen. I. I)." 

From tbe profound "Theology of Nature" by my venerable friend 
M. Hercule Straus-Durckheim, 74 whose long researches in compara- 
tive anatomy, at the Jardin des Plantes, vindicate Creative Power 
from vulgar anthropomorphous assimilations, I learn that: — "As 
concerns zoology, it was natural that the first classifiers — among 
whom Linnaeus, who is with reason considered the true founder of 
science, beyond all distinguished himself — were equally unable to 
employ other than exterior characteristics ; and therefore, soon per- 
ceiving that these data were insufficient, the successors of Linn^us, 
and of Buffon, adhered to seeking the veritable principles of this 
science in the study of the Anatomy, and of the Physiology of 
animals, which alone could make them known. It is thus that 
Daubenton, collaborator of Buffon, and Blumenbach, pupil of the 
illustrious Linn^us, were the first to cling to the study of these two 
sciences, in order to make them the basis of Zoology ; a study which 
our celebrated Cuvieb afterwards brought to a very high degree of 
perfection in his Legons d'Anatomie comparee : that work which 
forms, since its publication in 1805, the fundamental basis, not 
merely of all works of Anatomy and comparative physiology that 
have subsequently appeared, but likewise that of all treatises on 
Zoology, properly so-called, which discuss the classification of 
animals. * * * It was he (Linn^us) who created nomenclature and 

13 It is to a Jewish Rabbi, nevertheless, as might have been expected, that orthodoxy 
owes the best proofs of the colonization of America by lineal descendants of Adam and 
Eve. In 1650, R. Menasseh printed his "Spes Israelis," in which, following the monstrous 
fables of Montesini, he discovered true Indian Jews upon the Cordilleras! (Basnaqe, 
Hist, and Relig. of the Jews, transl. Taylor: London, fo). 1708; pp. 470-87). The He- 
brews, however, have settled in many parts of America since ; ever preserving their dis- 
tinctness from all races, white, negro, aboriginal Indian, or Sinico-mongol : the most 
curious instance being cited by Davis (Crania Britdnnka, p. 8, note) in the Israelitish 
colony at Antioquia, near Bogota. 

« Theologie de la Nature, Paris, 8vo, 3 vols, (chez l'auteur, Rue des Fosse's-Saint-Victor, 
14) — 1852: III, pp. 247-8. 

28 



434 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

style in natural history, giving to each species two names ; one, 
more particularly substantive, forming its generic Name; and the 
secoucl, adjective, indicating the Species, and constituting its specific 
Name." It becomes in consequence unnecessary, after this historical 
sketch, for us to begin earlier than the lifetime of the Gottingen 
philosopher. 

To Blumenbach, however, the action of "climate" was an ade- 
quate explanation of the "five varieties" he distinguishes in man. 
He believed that, "homines nigri subinde albescunt!" also, "et albi 
e contra nigrescunt !" 75 At a later date, he fortified this view in a 
treatise entitled "Ueber die Negern insbesondre;" 76 compiled chiefly 
from English emancipation-sources, and sustaining the perfectibility 
of negro races, with specimens of their poetry and literary works, 
on the well-known system of the benevolent Abbe Gregoire. 

Very similar are the opinions of Zimmermann, 77 although advo- 
cated far more from the naturalist than the theological point of 
view. Whilst he struggles to indicate the narrow geograpbical cir- 
cumscription of the range of most mammifers, he attributes to cli- 
mate, aliment, &c, such wondrous powers, that, according to him, 
a hyena, through transplantation, might, in some generations, become 
turned into a wolf! Kext applying these principles to man, Zim- 
mermann attempts to show how color is changed by climate, heat 
producing negroes and cold Esquimaux; cites the old traveller 
Benjamin, of Tudela, for Jews turning black in Abyssinia; 78 and 
credits a story related by Caldanus, how once he saw, a,t Venice, a 
negro wbo, brought there in childhood, had, in his old age, become 
yellowish! 19 Thus: "The white man can become black, and the 

75 Op. cit. 2d ed., pp. 56, 69, 72: — 3d ed., p. 51 seq. 

' 6 Blumenbach, Beytrcige zur Naiurgeschichte, Gottingen, 12mo, in two parts, 1806, 1811 ; 
pp. 73-97. 

77 Specimen Zoologies Geographicce quadrupedum domicilia et migrationes, 4to, Lugduni Bata- 
vorura, 1777; of which I use the French translation — "Zoologie GSographique, l r article, 
L 'Homme," Cassel, 8vo, 1784; pp. 44, 131, 135, 189-90. 

78 See, on the Falashas, "Types of Mankind," pp. 122-3. That these people are merely 
African aborigines, converted to a pseudo-Judaism, may now be verified through their 
portraits (Cf. Lefebvke, Voyage en Abyssinie, 1839-43; Atlas fol. — "Ukite, femme Fela- 
cha, ag^e de 40 ans" — whose race is identical with those of many other non-Jewish nations 
figured in the same excellent work). Besides, Benan has abolished any imagined philolo- 
gical connection, in the clause, that the speech of these Fal&syan "n'a rien de semitique" 
(Hist, des Langues Semiliques, pp. 311-2). Compare, also, Antoine d'Abbadie, Letter to 
M. Jomard, on the " Falacha, Juifs d' Abyssinie (3 Nov. 1844): Ce type existe chez les Agaw 
de l'Atala et du Simen, et chez les Sidama. B nous est impossible de le ramener au type 
juif. La langue des Falacha est la meme que celle qui vient de s'^teindre dans le Dembya." 
Bulletin de la Soc. de GiograpMe, Paris, Juillet, 1845; pp. 44, 72. 

79 What was believed last century on these subjects, even by physicians, may be seen in 
a small work I possess — "Trait*; de la couleur de la peau humaine en general, de celle des 



THE POLYGENISTS. 435 

black on the contrary white, and this change is again carried on 
through the different degrees of heat and cold" — his conclusion 
being that "man, possessing himself thus little by little of all cli- 
mates, becomes, through their influence, here a Georgian, there a 
negro, elsewhere an Eskimau !" 

Next in order should follow Lawrence, could one readily seize 
(through the variations of theory manifest in different editions of 
his work) what are the real stand-points of genius so versatile. He 
has the Protean faculty of saying one thing and believing another, 
interchangeably ; and may be quoted either on the unity or diversity 

negres en particulier, et de la metamorphose d'une de ces couleurs dans l'autre, soit de nais- 
sance, soit accidentellement," by M. Le Cat, Doctor, &c, Amsterdam, 8vo, 1765. No 
physiologist, however, disputes that disease will, more or less temporarily, change the color 
of the skin. There are albino negroes as well as while elephants, raccoons, deer, or mice. 
On these points, by far the most powerful argument is the late Dr. Charles Caldwell's anni- 
hilating review of an "Essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the 
human species; by the Rev. Dr. S. S. Smith, of Princeton Coll., N. J., 1810" — published, 
in four admirable articles, in the Philadelphia "Portfolio," 8vo, 1814; vol. iv., 3d series. 
See particularly, pp. 26-31, 259-271, "the case of Henry Moss." 

Without pretending to enter into discussions in which none but physiologists are entitled 
to respectful attention, let me refer those desiroxis of enlightenment to the great work of 
Dr. Prosper Lucas [Traits philosophique el physiologique de Vheredile" nalurelle, Paris, 1847, 
2 vols. 8vo) for every example, throughout the range of animate nature, bearing upon the 
laws of " Inneile and Heredite'in the procreation of the vital mechanism." 

The most recent, no less than the most brilliant, American writer of the day on " Human 
Physiology, statical and dynamical" (New York, 1856, pp. 565-580), seems to me still to 
lay too much stress upon the supposed action of "climate" on the coloration of the human 
Bkin ; and inasmuch as Dr. Draper's ever-scientific language has given rise to pitiful 
absurdities like those put forth in an article appropriately entitled "The Cooking of Men" 
[Harper's Magazine, Oct., 1856), it may be well to counterbalance such exaggerations of his 
high authority by the following paragraph of a physiologist certainly not less eminent. Da. 
Same. Geo. Morton says (Illustrated System of Human Anatomy, Special, General, and 
Microscopic, Philadelphia, 1849, p. 151): "It is a common opinion, that climate alone is 
capable of producing all those diversities of complexion so remarkable in the human races. 
A very few facts may suffice to show that such cannot be the case. Thus, the negroes of 
Van Diemen's Land, who are among the blackest people on the earth, live in a climate as 
cold as that of Ireland; while the Indo-Chinese nations, who live in tropical Asia, are of a 
brown and olive complexion. It is remarked, by Humboldt, that the American tribes of 
the equinoctial region have no darker skin than the mountaineers of the Temperate Zone. 
So also the Puelchfe of the Magellanic plains, beyond the fifty-fifth degree of south lati- 
tude, are absolutely darker than Abipones, Tobas, and other tribes, who are many degrees 
nearer the equator. Again, the Charruas, who inhabit south of the Rio de la Plata, are 
almost black, whilst the Guaycas, under the line, are among the fairest of the American 
tribes. Finally, not to multiply examples, those nations of the Caucasian race which have 
become inhabitants of the Torrid Zone, in both hemispheres, although their descendants 
have been for centuries, and in Africa for many centuries, exposed to the most active 
influences of climate, have never, in a solitary instance, exhibited the transformation from 
the Caucasian to a negro complexion. They become darker, it is true ; but there is a point 
at which the change is arrested. Climate modifies the human complexion, but is far from 
being the cause of it." 



436 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

side, accordingly as we stumble upon a given edition of his learned 
and useful book. In the one before me, 80 I find this conclusion : 
" 5thly. That the human species, therefore, like that of the cow, 
sheep, horse, and pig, is single ; and that all the differences which it 
exhibits, are to be regarded merely as varieties." Alas ! I fear that 
if the unity of mankind cannot be sustained upon better zoological 
or analogical grounds than this supposed singleness of species of 
cows, sheep, horses, or even pigs, there are but few naturalists, at 
the present day, who do not take an opposite view. 

A long list of minor writers on man, exclusive of numerous 
theological dilettanti — of less importance than the Abbe Frere 81 or 
the Abbe Migne 82 — might here be introduced, before reaching Eusebe 
de Salles 83 at Marseilles, Hollard 84 of Geneva, or "Ward 85 in London 
— all of whom, setting out with preconceived determination to vin- 
dicate the parental claims of "Adam and Eve," enter ipso facto 
into the category above distinguished by the letter A. 

The whole of these authors, great or small, merge into Prichard, 
— whose profound bibliographical knowledge and unsurpassed in- 
dustry constitute at once the alpha and omega of all that may survive 
the criticism of advancing science, in the above-named books. In 
our " Types of Mankind," what my collaborator, Dr. Nott, and 
myself deemed to be this revered ethnographer's fallacies, has 
already been pointed out. By omitting to bestow adequate conside- 
ration on "permanence of type," when all materials were within his 
reach, Dr. Prichard exposed the vital error of his system, leaving to 
Dr. Morton the honors of the field. I have no wish to disturb the 
ashes of departed greatness, except to consecrate those of both men 
in funereal urns of equal grandeur. Mr. Edwin ISTorris's new and 
beautiful edition 86 is embellished, and in philology usefully extended, 
by this learned gentleman's notes. The ending sentence, on the 
final page, discloses the only ultimatum of Prichard's doctrine that 
now concerns us. It seems like the last vestige of dogmatical bias 

80 Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man; 1 vol. 8vo, London, 
1819; compare p. 501 with 548. 

81 Principes de la Philosophie de VHistoire, Paris, 1838; pp. 73-89: — and L' Homme connu 
par la Revelation, Paris, 1833; II, pp. 195, 206-221. 

82 Diclionnaire de V Ethnographic moderne, 4to, double column, Paris, 1853, pp. 1927! Its 
only merit consists in the republication, by way of introductory, of D'Omaiius d'Hallot's 
excellent Elements d' Ethnographic 

83 Hist. Gen. des Races Humaines, ou Philosophic Ethnographique, Paris. 12mo, 1849; pp. 
295-99. 

84 De V Homme el des Races Humaines, Paris, 12mo, 1853; last page. 

85 The Natural History of Mankind, London, 12mo, 1849; p. 7, &c. 

86 Prichard, Natural History of Man, edited by Edwin Norris, Esq., London, Bailliere, 2 
vols. 8vo, 1854; LT, p. 714. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 437 

which its upright penman did not live to modify or efface : "We are 
entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are 
of one species and one family." 

Not in any sense derived from theological formularies, however, 
does Alexander von Humholdt understand the term " unity " as 
classified under our letter A. Eb such idea can he found through- 
out the eleven pages of Cosmos devoted to the " human species " as a 
component part of nature. On the contrary, in the paragraph that 
heads this essay (ubi suptra), Humboldt expressly repudiates myths, 
fiction, and pretended tradition. Let us inquire whether the Baron's 
definition of this word should find a place with letter B. 

To a certain extent it must ; because the phrase " unity of the 
human species," preceding and following the declaration of the great 
physiologist John Miiller, viz : that " human races are the forms of 
an unique species," m necessarily implies connection with the termi- 
nology of Natural History. Such, I find, is the sense in which the 
Baron's learned countryman, Dr. Zeune, understands the same pas- 
sage — "The expression, 'unity of the human race,' has been vari- 
ously misunderstood, and referred to the so-called unity, or descent 
from a single human pair. But the honored author did not mean 
the world-historical unity, but the natural-historical unity ; that is, 
the prolific perpetuation of the different human races, so that their 
hybrids can again cohabit fruitfully with each other ; and not like 
allied genera [groups], such as the horse and ass, wolf and dog, pro- 
duce sterile hybrids, like mules [cavaline-asses] and wolf-dog [lu- 
pine-hound], which can only propagate themselves through the parent 
stock." He remarks, besides, " To draw the origin of the different 
human races from one single man is absurd and impossible. These 
races exist independently one from another since the oldest times. 
Which was the most ancient it is impossible to say." 83 So also, still 
more recently, does Owen, 69 whose anatomical authority is to none 
inferior, conclude that — "Man is the sole species of his genus, the 
sole representative of his order;" — almost the words of Blumenbach, 
echoed by eminent naturalists for three consecutive generations ; 
especially by those who with Cuvier, 90 De Blainville, 91 Gervais, 02 and 

87 Cosmos, Fr. ed., i. p. 425; and infra. 

88 tjber Schadelbildung zur festern Begriindung der Menchenrassen, Berlin, 1846. 

89 Newspaper report of Lecture on Anthropoids before the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science; session of 1854. 

90 Griffith's transl., I, London, p. 129. 

91 Oslcographie, Mammifires, Primates; 4to., 1841. 

82 Trois regnes de la Nature, Hist. Nat. des Mammiferes, 4to., Paris, 1854; Ire. partie, pp. 
7-8 



438 THE MOKOGENISTS AND 

Chenu, 93 have discussed more recently the points of resemblance, or 
of disparity, existing between the Bimanes and the Quadrumanes. 
Their united results will be passed under review in the second divi- 
sion of our essay. 

Nevertheless, Morton 94 and Agassiz 95 — accounted by celebrated 
naturalists, anatomists, cranioscopists, palaeontologists, and ethnogra- 
phers, to possess a weighty voice in the premises, have not been able 
to reconcile the term " species," as applied customarily (and as I 
think, too loosely) to mankind, with the rigorous use of this word in 
more broadly-marked departments of Natural History. 

Dr. Meigs's, Prof. Leidy's, Dr. Nott's, contributions to the present 
volume cover the ground of debate on a point which, in its bearings 
upon mankind, each writer has studied as profoundly as any ethno- 
logist living. For my individual part, I follow my master in archae- 
ology, Letronne ; who, in 1845, commenced his first lesson to our 
crowded Egyptian class, at Paris, with the sentence — " Messieurs ! 
avant tout, commencons par nous entendre sur des termes:" because, 
until the precise limit of the designation "species" becomes abso- 
lutely defined, or even conventionally agreed upon, it might, per- 
haps, be prudent to suspend its further obtrusion into Anthropology. 

A naturalist of repute has remarked — " The Germans themselves, 
whose terminology did possess the fault of being so vague, now 
aspire to exactitude of language. This does not mean to say that 
the definitions of naturalists have an absolute value, that is not pos- 
sible in human sciences; but they have at least a -precise value. 
Everybody [?] now-a-days knows what is understood by the words 
species, race, and variety. 

"It is certain that, in scientific discussions of which man has been 
the object, the words genus, species, race, and variety, have been too 
often confounded. Nevertheless, the meaning of these words is now 
perfectly determined, and it suffices, to avoid all error, to stick to 
the definitions laid down by naturalists. Thus, one generally under- 
stands by species, an assemblage of beings which descend, or may be 
regarded as descending, from common parentage [that is, first a rule 
is made absolute, a priori, and then all the different types of men are 
made to fit into it !] The union of many species, possessing between 
each other multiplied affinities, forms a genus. The words race and 
variety both indicate a variation of the type of the species, of which, 



93 Encyclopedic d ' Hisloire Naturelle, Paris, 1852? vol. i, "Quadrumanes, pp. 1-21: pro- 
bably among the most copious as well as the fairest analyzers of these questions. 

94 Types of Mankind, pp. 81, 375, and elsewhere, cites Dr. Morton's writings. 

96 Op. cit., p. lxxiT, Prof. Agassiz's definitions. See also the Professor's fresh contribu- 
tion, ante. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 439 

moreover, they are derivatives. But the word variety is not appli- 
cable save to individuals : the word race is an assemblage of indivi- 
duals descending from the same species and transmitting to each 
other determinate characters. 

" The difference between species and race is, therefore, that the first 
possesses something fixed, something independent of accidental and 
variable conditions of the (viilieu ambiant) fluctuating centre. The 
second, on the contrary, presents ordinarily the result of this {action 
du milieu) central action, and in consequence is essentially variable. 

" Conformably to these definitions, all mankind constitute but a 
single species, although there are among them some different races ; 
but these races can all be brought back to one and the same primi- 
tive type." 96 This explanation I deny in toto. 

M. Paul de Eemusat, in ethnological studies no tyro, after stating 
both sides with fairness, and then concluding for his part that 
"unity" is impossible, 97 frankly inquires — "What, then, is this spe- 
cific character ? Can one give to species a clear and precise defini- 
tion? Do there even necessarily exist 'species,' as our minds are 
prone to suppose? * * * whilst (forsooth) we cannot come to a com- 
mon understanding, either upon the meaning of the word 'species,' 
nor determine a sign, real and invariable, of distinction between the 
different classes called by this name" ! Another of those clear- 
sighted naturalists, trained at the Jardin des Platites, whose special 
gift it seems to pierce through mystifications, started, ten years ago, 
a series of difficulties about "species " which none but thorough-bred 
naturalists (not the mere theological dilettante) are competent to 
analyze or remove : nor will outsiders like myself fail to be enlight- 
ened, as well as amused, by whatever is scored by the steel-tipped 
pen of M. Gerard. 98 Again, Prof. Joseph Leidy, 99 rejecting previous 
definitions, observes that — "A species is a mere convenient word 
with which naturalists empirically designate groups of organized 
beings possessing characters of comparative constancy, as far as his- 
toric experience [precisely the criteria demanded (ubi supra) by Joh. 
Miiller, and which both the Humboldts acknowledge to be, with 
respect to human origines, a powerless implement] has guided them in 
giving due weight to such constancy. According to this definition," 
Prof. Leidy continues, " the races of men are evidently distinct species." 

96 M. de Quatkefages, at the Seance du 9 Juillet, 1847, of the Society Ethnologique de 
Paris (Bulletin, Tome i., 1847; p. 237). 

97 " Des Races Humaines " — Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Mai, 1854, pp. 788-804. 

98 D'Oebigny, Dictionnaire Univ. d'ffisloire Nalurelle, Paris, 1844, vol. V, sub voce "Es- 
pece," pp. 438-52. 

99 Nott's Appendix B. to The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, &c, from the 
French of De Gobineau, by H. Hotz, Philada., 12mo., 1856; pp. 480-1. 



440 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

And finally, Alfred Maury, no raw recruit even in the physical 
sciences, the analysis of which preceded his present high status in the 
archaeological and ethnographic — reviewing Hotz's Be G-ohineau, and 
Pott's Ungleichheit menschlicher Rassen, m critically ohserves — " The 
constitution of the human mind is one, without doubt; but what sig- 
nifies the mental unity of humanity, if, in its application, men treat 
each other as members of inimical or rival families, — if the force of 
things always condemns the ones to fall beneath the domination of 
the others, and to extinguish themselves in their arms ? To dispute 
about knowing whether races constitute different 'species,' or merely 
'varieties,' is to put forth school-divinity and not science. That which 
is necessary is, to measure the extent of separations, and hence ascer- 
tain the proportions of those inequalities that none can deny. The 
name which one may give to human races will not affect the thing 
itself, nor in any way alter the reality." 

" Varius Sucronensis ait, iEMiuus Scaurits negat : utri creditis, qtiirites ?" I01 

In the face of such objections, before an archaeologist can subscribe 
unconditionally to the " unity of the human ' species,' " he ought to 
wait until some revelation enables those who use this apothegm to 
show that they really comprehend the signification of a term logically 
inherent in their proposition. That is to say, — adopting here the 
forcible if trite aphorism of a scientific colleague — in plain English 
and without diplomatic circumlocution, when dictionaries furnish me 
with as precise a meaning for the term " species " as I can discover 
for such words as beef, or mutton™ it will be time enough for accept- 
ing its alleged corollary, viz : the "unity" of sanguineous, or conge- 
nital, descent for all the diverse groups of men — now distinct in 
colors, in conformations, in languages, in geographical habitats, in 
historical traditions, and in all their other countless moral, intellec- 
tual, and physical phenomena — from a mythic "Adam and Eve." 

" At the very onset we are met by the question, What is a species? 
and sides will be taken according to the answer each one is ready to 
adopt. The definition of a species does not necessarily include 
descent from a single pair, because the first male [AISA] and the 
first female [AIS/;aII] would, by the definition, be of different spe- 
cies," — acutely remarks Prof. Haldeman. 103 

In that whereon everybody, whether competent to decide or not, 
volunteers an " opinion," typographical facilities costeris paribus 

"» Athenaium Francais, Paris, 19 Avril, 1856; p. 328. 

101 Bentley, Phalaris, ed. 1836; i., p. xii. ; from Val. Max. Hi. 7. 

102 ii Xe mot est peut-Stre unpeu fe'roce; mats, sacre bleu, il est sincere!" — as Penguin says, 
in "Riche d' Amour." 

103 Recent Freshwater Mollusca (supra) pp. 3-4. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 441 

enable me to do the same ; and mine, on this mystified term " spe- 
cies," as applicable to the genus homo alone, will, like that of other 
men, pass for what it may be worth : the critic always remembering 
that a definition is precise in the ratio of the fewness of its words. 
I submit to fellow-arch geologists — 

Species ; that which, through conjunction with itself, always, 
according to experience, reproduces itself. 

Thus, by way of example, the union of a negro with a negress 
produces a negro ; that of an American Indian with a squaw produces 
an Indian ; that of a Jew (circumcision, in- or ex- elusive) with a 
Jewess produces a Jew ; that of a Saxon male with a Saxon female 
produces a Saxon ; and so forth, invariably, throughout all the fami- 
lies of men. In any case where the offspring of each chances not 
to be identical, in its race-character, with the supposed parents, such 
deviation can occur only where either parent is not of pure blood ; 
and proves, ipso facto, that the ancestral pedigrees of one or the other 
procreator must, within the limit of about three to seven (or more) 
preceding generations, have been crossed by a foreign stock. 

Indeed, I do not see why the first definition of Prichard does not 
circumscribe all the above examples. It is that given in the second 
edition, 104 1826, of his erudite works ; which differs, not merely 
through the entire absence of this lucid rule in the first, m 1813 ; but 
also essentially from the one laid down at a later period, 1837, in 
the third. 1 " 6 Prichard's capacious mind, like that of all conscientious 
inquirers, was progressive ; and those who really know the various 
editions of his "Researches," cannot fail to admire how quickly he 
dropped one hypothesis after another, until his last volume closes 
with a complete abandonment of the unity of Genesis itself. 107 It 
is probable that his biographer, Dr. Cull, is as little acquainted with 
these bibliophile discrepancies, as with ethnological criticism gene- 
rally — Hebrew palaeography inclusive. 108 Prichard printed in a. d. 
1826: 

" The meaning attached to the term Species [almost identical with 

1M Researches into the Physical History of Man, London, 2d edition, 8vo, 1826; vol. I, 
pp. 90-1. 

lm Op. cit., 1st edition, London, 8vo, 1813 — nothing of the kind! 

106 Op. cit., 3d edition, London, 8vo, 1837; vol. II, p. 105: — cited at length in "Types 
of Mankind," p. 80. 

107 Physical History of Mankind, 8vo, London, 1847 ; vol. V, pp. 560-65. 

108 Norris's edition of Prichard's Natural History of Man; London, Bailliere, 1854; 
vol. I, pp. xxi-ix: — "Short biographical Notice," by Richard Cull, Esq., "Honorary 
Secretary." How correctly he reads English, may be inferred from his critique of Agassiz's 
paper (Address to the Ethnological Society of London, May, 1854; London, 8vo, pp. 12-13.); 
where he substitutes "6. The Hottentot realm," (p. 8) for " Hottentot fauna" (compare 
" Types of Mankind," p. lxxvii). 



442 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Lacordiere's in his Entomologie], in natural history, is very simple 
and obvious. It includes only one circumstance, namely, an original 
distinctiveness and constant transmission of any character. A race 
of animals, or plants, marked by any peculiarity of structure, which 
have always been constant and undeviating, constitutes a species ; 
and two races are considered as specifically different, if they are 
distinguished from each other by some peculiarities, which one 
cannot be supposed to have acquired, or the other to have lost, 
through any known operation of physical causes : for we are led to 
conclude, that the tribe thus distinguished cannot have sprung from 
the same original stock." It need hardly be repeated that the 
learned ethnographer endeavors to show the inapplicability, owing 
to deviations, of this law to Man. My studies lead me to the oppo- 
site opinion, exemplified in the instances above enumerated. 

Such simple principles are notorious to dog-fanciers, cattle- 
breeders, or poultry-men •; and are practised by them with unerring 
pecuniary success, in the rearing of animals, quadruped or biped. 
It is but a superstition that imagines mankind not to be bound by 
the same natural law. 

Under this self-evident rule, some scholastic confusion of ideas 
may be disposed of through a few interrogatories. If, by " species" 
are meant beings of the same (equally -conventional word) genus, 
whose sexual union produces offspring, mankind fall into that class 
unquestionably ; with dogs, sheep, goats, and other mammals sus- 
ceptible of domestication ; m but what living naturalist, of repute, at 
this year 1857, any longer classifies all the canes, all the oves, or all 
the caprse, each into a single "species?" If hybridity, in any of 
its various and as yet unsettled degrees, be considered a test of 
"species" — i. e. the production of progeny more or less linprolific 
inter se — then, in Australia, 110 a native female of the aboriginal 
stock ceases, after cohabitation with an English colonist, to pro- 
create upon reunion with a male autochthon of her own race : 
— then, in Van Diemen's Land, before the deportation of its few 
(only 210) remaining aborigines, in 1835, to Elinder's Island, Bass's 
Straits, 111 even a convict population of athletic and unscrupulous 
English males failed, in their intercourse with Tasmanian females, 

109 Morton, Hybridity in Animals and Plants, New Haven, 1847 ; p. 23. — The egagre is, 
however, reputed to be the father of all goats ; the movflon, that of all sheep ; the Nepaulese 
buansu (canis primcevus) that of all dogs; just as Adam that of all mankind; according to 
Marcel de Serres (Cosmogonie de Mo'isc, I, pp. 307-22). 

110 Stkzelecki, Physical description of Nev> South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, London, 
8vo, 1845; pp. 346-7: — -Jacquinot, Zoologie, II, p. 109: — Knox, Races, p. 190. 

111 Quor et Gtaimarb, Voy. de I' Astrolabe, 1826-9; Zoologie, Paris, 8vo, 1830; I, p. 
46: — D'Omalius d'Halloy, Des Races Surnames, 1845 ; p. 186. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 443 

not merely to produce an intermediate race, but to leave more than 
one or two adult specimens of their repugnant unions ; nor are there 
reports either of hybrids, resulting from the mixture of Europeans 
with the Andamanes of the hay of Bengal: — then, in the ultra-tropi- 
cal parts of America, as well as in its southern or tropical States, 
mulattoes, produced by intercourse between exotic Europeans of 
the white race, with equally-exotic African females of the black, die 
out, unless recrossed by one or other of the parental stocks, in three 
or four generations: 112 — then, in Egypt, the Memlooks, or "Ghuz," 
originally male slaves 113 of the Uzbek, Ouigour and Mongol races, 
and afterwards kept up by incessant importations of European, 
Turkish, Circassian, and other white boys (intermixed with negro 
slaves), were not only unable to rear half-caste children to recruit 
their squadrons ; — but, whilst their blood-stains are scarcely yet 
obliterated on the battlements of the Cairine-Citadel since their 
slaughter in 1811, not a trace survives of their promiscuous philo- 
gamy among the Fellah population of the Nile : — then, in Algeria, 
the Moorish [Mauri), or Mauresque 114 inhabitants of seaboard cities, 
[in a climate which, except in depressed agricultural localities (where 
the 3Ioors do not reside), is like that of southern Spain] unstrength- 
ened (as of yore in the piratical clays when Christian captives of all 
shades, and negro prisoners of every hue, thronged their slave- 
bazaars) by the perpetual influx of new and vigorous blood, — are 
dying off at a fearful rate 115 through the inexorable laws of hybridity ; 
at the same time that, after twenty-five years of experimental agri- 

112 Nott, Natural Hist, of the Caucasian and Negro Races, Mobile, 1844; pp. 16-7, 19, 
28. 30-5 -.—Biblical and Physical Hist, of Man ; New York, 1849 ; pp. 30-47. 

113 Klapeoth, Tableaux de VAsie, Paris, 1826, pp. 121-2. Ebn Khaledoon, Histoire des 
Berberes et des Dynasties Musulmanes de V Afrique Septentrionale, Transl. de Slane, Alger, 
1851, II, p. 49 — and Note from Quatremere (Mem. sitr I'Eggpte, II, p. 356). 

114 Carette, Exploration Scientifique de V Algerie, 1840-2, Paris, 1853; III, pp. 306-10, 
for intermixture of Races, &c. Pascal-Duprat, Essai Historique sur les Races anciennes el 
modernes de V Afrique Septentrionale, Paris, 1845; pp. 217, 240-64: — but the best definition 
of the varied inhabitants of that part of Barbary may be seen in Rozet (Voyage dans la 
Regence d' Alger, Paris, 1833), who, among the "sept varifitfa d'hommes bien distinctes les 
vines des autres ; les Berblres, les Maures, les negres, les Arabes, les Tares et les Koulouglis," 
clearly strikes out the mixed populace of Maures (Moors): and proves, as well their hy- 
bridity, as the misconceptions (Shakspeare's Othello to wit) prevalent about their name 
"Moor" (II, pp. 1-3, 51-2). On the opposite side, consult Bertherand, Medecine el 
Hygiene des Arabes, Paris, 1855; pp. 174, 556. 

115 Boudin, Hisloire Slatistique de la colonisation et de la Population en Algerie, Paris, 1853 ; 
pp. 5, 21, 30: — See also Knox (Races of Men, pp. 197-210), who acknowledges that he 
derives his information from a former publication of the highest authority in these ques- 
tions, my honored friend, M. le Dr. Boudin, Me'decin en Chef de l'Hopital Militaire du 
Roule, Paris (Lettres sur V Algerie, 1848). I await with great expectations, having seen 
some of its proof-sheets at Paris, Dr. Boudin's Traile de Stalislique et de Geographic medicales 
(now "sous presse chez Bailliere"), for complete establishment of all these positions. 



444 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

culture, civil, military, and convict, through which myriads of 
colonists have perished, it has become a settled fact in the Imperial 
administration that, as tillers of the soil, Frenchmen can never 
colonize Barhary ; 116 [like the English in Hindostan, the Dutch in 
Malayana, the Spaniards in South America, and the Portuguese in 
Africa, France must employ native labor — that of the indigenous 
"adscripti glebse," viz., the Berber race, or its exotic congener the 
Arab] : — and then, finally, not to burthen the page with illustrations 
that every country in the world can supply, if history, which means 
experience (the only test recognized by Miiller, Leidy, and by archae- 
ology), be taken as a criterion, we have yet to learn whether the 
greatest nations have not developed themselves through the union 
of proximate "species," and the most deplorable arisen through 
that of remote ones. 

To explain my conception, two references will at present suffice : 
first, to our last publication, 117 for Dr. ISTott's definition of ethnic sub- 
divisions of ' species ;' and next, to the work of our learned friend 
Count A. de Gobineau ; 11S from whom — however I may differ in trifles 
relating to his fundamental theory of the Arian origin of all civili- 
zation, or to his classifications of Xth Genesis — ethnology, in his three 
chapters on the Romans, derives one of the most masterly elucida- 
tions ever penned by any historian. Nor is this eulogium merely a 
prejudice of my own ; three of the best-informed and critical scholars 
of England, to whom I lent M. de Gobineau's volumes, coinciding 
entirely in such hearty acknowledgment. The following specimen 
will be new to the general reader : — 

" But there appeared once, in the history of decaying peoples, a 
man strenuously indignant at the debasement of his nation ; dis- 
cerning with eagle eye, through the mists of false prosperity, the 
abyss toward which a general demoralization was dragging the com- 
monwealth; and who, master of all the means for action, — birth, 
riches, talents, personal standing, high appointments — found him- 
self, at the same time, robust in sanguinary nature, and determined 
not to shrink from the use of any resource. This surgeon — this 
butcher, if you please — this august scoundrel, if you like it better — 
this Titan — showed himself in Rome at the moment when the re- 
public, drunk with crimes, with dominion, and with triumphal 

us Desjobekt, L'Algerie, 1847; pp. 5-8, 23-29:— Id. Discours in the Assemble Na- 
tionale Legislative, Session de 1850, pp. 8-18 : — Id., Documents Statistiques sur VAlgerie, 
1851, pp. 3-5. Dr. Nott has enlarged upon these new facts in his Chap. IV, ante. 

U' Types of Mankind, pp. 81, 407-10. 

us Essai sur V Inegalile des Races Humaines, 1855; III, Chap. V, VI, VII; especially pp. 
274-7. 



THE POL YGENISTS. 



445 



exhaustion, gnawed by the leprosy of every vice, was rolling itself 
over and over towards an abyss. He was Lucius Cornelius 
Stlla. * * * 

"At the end of a long career, after efforts of which the measure 
of intensity is the violence accumulated, Sylla, despairing of the 
future — melancholy, worn out, discouraged — abdicated of his own 
accord the dictator's hatchet ; and, resigning himself to live unoccu- 
pied in the midst of that patrician or plebeian populace which still 
shuddered at sight of him, he proved, at least, that he was not a mere 
vulgar and ambitious politician; and that, having recognized the 
inanity of his hopes, he cared not to preserve a sterile power. * * * 
" There really existed no chance of his success. The populace he 
wished to bring back to the manners and discipline of the olden time, 
resembled in nothing that republican people who had practised them. 
To convince oneself, it suffices to compare the ethnic elements of the 
days of Cincinnatus [b. c. 460] with those existing at the epoch when 
the great dictator lived [b. c. 188-81]. 



Time of Cincinnatps. 



Time of Stlla. 



1 Sabines, in majority ; 
■I EUiiscans, a few; 
ItaliotSy a few. 

Sabines, 
Samnites, 
SabeRians, 
Sicilies, 
_ Hellenes, a few. 



1st. Intermixed majority 
of white and yellow 
[dark] races ; 



2d. Very feeble Semitic Im- 
migration. 



Jtalwts, crossed with 

Hellenic blood. 
ltcdwts. 

Greelcs of Magna Qracia, 

and from Sicily; 

Hellenists of Asia; 

Shemites of Asia ; 

Shemites of Africa; 

t Shemites of Spain. 



1st. Majority Semiti- 
cized; 

2d. Minority Arian : 

3d. Extreme subdivi- 
sion of the yellow 
[dark] principle." 



It is impossible to bring back into the same frame-work two 
nations which, under the same name, resemble each other so little," 
very correctly observes M. de Gobineau : and I will only add that, 
when ethnologists apply this excellent method of analysis to every 
nation, — especially to these United States of America — they will 
obtain practical results undreamed of by literary historians, who, 
believing in the "Unity of the human Species," have neither any 
idea of these amalgamations of distinct races, nor of their natural, 
and therefore inevitable, consequences for good or evil. 

Again reverting to our questions as to the word "species," after 
stripping away sophistries that encumber such vague term, let me 
ask, — does any one pretend, when races are called by their intelli- 
gible names, that carnal intercourse between an Eskimo and a Ne- 
gress ever originated what we understand by a Greek, — between a 
Dane and a Dyak, an Arab, — between a Tungousian and an Israelite, 



446 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

a New Zealander, — or between a Botocudo and a Tasmanian, a Bfant- 
chou Tartar, a Lapp, a BecJwuana, or perchance a Kelt ? In every 
one of these imaginary, and, anciently, geographically-impossible 
unions, each fecund act of coition could produce but a "half-breed;" 
intermediate, that is, between any two races. One feels ashamed, 
now that transformation of one " species " of animal into another 
through the exploded power of metamorphosis, in former days of 
ignorance attributed to climate, is rejected, as contrary to experience, 
by all living naturalists (even the theological) — one really blushes to 
descend to such common-place methods of illustration ; but the neces- 
sity is imperious in view of the amount of perversion and mediaeval 
credulity still passing currently as regards the study of Man. 

A.nd when Blumenbach 119 and Ism. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 130 Btjr- 
dach 121 and Lucas, 122 Berard 123 and Girou de Buzareingues, 124 
Walker 125 and Chevreull, 126 Flourens 127 and Morton, 128 Vogt 129 
and Priaulx, 130 pile up instances' (among mammifera alone), 
whereby the so-called laws of "species," and often too of "genera," 
are set at naught by contradictory facts, is it not folly in ethnologists 
to go on wasting their time about the encyclopaedic meaning of an 
Anglicized foreign bisyllable, which every true naturalist of the pre- 
sent day is forced to qualify with explanatory adjectives, according 
to his individual acceptation of its sense ? Voltaire pithily remarks 
— " Ce qu'on peut expliquer de vingt manieres differentes ne merite 
d'etre explique d'aucune:" — and for myself, I have long ago dis- 
carded its use in ethnography, — substituting " Type" when I intend 
to designate men whose physical appearance stands in strongest con- 
trast to that of others (ex. gr. Swedes and Negritos, Chaymas and 
Georgians, Kourilians and Mandaras, Taitians and Yakuts) ; or 
"Race" where the distinction is not so strongly characterized (as 
between Italians and Greeks, Jews and Arabs, Malgaches and Ma- 

119 De Generis ffumani varielate nativa, 1781 ; pp. 7-11. 

120 Bisloire ginHrah et particulate des Anomalies de V Organisation, Paris, 1832 ; i. pp. 221-6. 
' M Traite de Physiologie, trad. Jourdan, Paris; 2d vol. 1838, pp. 182-5, 261-70. 

' 122 Traite" philosophique et physiologique de V Se'redite Nalurelle, Paris, 1847; i. pp. 193-209; 

ii. pp. 177-329. 
123 Cours de Physiologie, Paris, 1850-55. 
»» De la Generation, Paris, 8to., 1828; pp. 124-132, 307-8. 

125 On Intermarriage, London, 8vo. 1838 ; — and Physiognomy founded on Physiology, 1834. 

126 Journal des Savants, Juin, 1846; p. 357. 

12J De la Longiviti Eumaine, Paris, 1855; pp. 106-161. 

128 Nott, in Types of Mankind, chap. xii. and p. 724, notes, cites all important papers of 

Dr. Morton. 

129 Carl Vogt, Hohlerglaube .und Wissenschaft, Wiessen, 1855; pp. 59-67. 

130 Osmond de Beauvoir Priaxjlx, Quaisliones Mosaicce, London, 1842 — on "breeding in 

and in," pp. 471-83. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 447 

lays) ; 131 but in no case do I affirm by employment of such terms, 
whilst in most cases doubting, with the illustrious Humboldts, the 
common pedigree of any two of such types, or races, back to a mythic 
single pair called "Adam and Eve." 

"Hence, then," I accept Marcel de Serres's rule, disputing only 
the accuracy of the facts through which he would endeavor to elimi- 
nate mankind from its action — " generation ought, it seems, to be 
considered as the type of species, and the only foundation upon which 
it can be established in a certain and rational manner :" 132 guarding 
it with the language of the learned Colonel Hamilton Smith, 133 viz : 
— that, " if no better argument, or more decisive fact can be adduced, 
than that axiom which declares, that ' fertile offspring constitute the 
proof of identity of species,' we may be permitted to reply, that as 
this maxim does not repose upon unexceptionable facts, it deserves 
to be held solely in the light of a criterion, more convenient in syste- 
matic classification than absolutely correct." 

Should these views meet with favor among fellow-students in the 
Mortonian school of ethnology, it will become (save and except for 
their always meritorious collection of facts) almost a work of super- 
erogation to inquire what individual of former sustainers of the 
" unity of the human species" deserves to be classified under the 
letter B. 

Thus Camper, 134 Lacepede, 135 Lesson, 136 or Griffith, 137 — each a mas- 
ter in mammalogy, without reference to their copyists innumerable, 
— are maintainers of human unity of species on zoological grounds ; 
as are likewise Walchnaer, 138 Haller, 139 Pitta, 140 "Wagner, 141 Bakker, 142 

131 See Blanchaed, in Dumoutier's Anthropologic, Paris, 1854, pp. 18-9. 

132 Essaisur les Cavernes a Ossements, Paris, 8vo., 3d ed., 1838; pp. 234, 268, 398. 

133 Natural History of the Human Species; Edinburgh, 12mo., 1848; p. 21 : — compare Des- 

moulins (Races Humaines, pp. 194-7), for certain limits of this law of generation. 

134 (Euvrcs de Pierre Camper qui out pour objet VHisioire Nalurelle, la Physiologic el VAna- 

tomie comparee, Paris, 8vo., 1803; ii. p. 453. 

1 35 Hisloire Nalurelle de P Homme, Paris, 18mo., 1821 ; p. 183. 

136 Zoologie, Paris, 1826, 4to. ; i. p. 34 — in Duperrey, Voy. de la Coquille, 1822-5: also, 

Ibid. Races Humaines, in Complement des (Euvres de Buffon, Paris, 1828; i. p. 44. 

137 Translation of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, London, 4to., 1827; i. Introd. p. xi. ; and 

"Supplemental History of Man," p. 178, seq. 

138 Essai sur Phistoire de PEspece humaine, Paris, 8vo., 1798, p. 10; — and Cosmologie, ou 

Description gener ale de la Terre, Paris, 8vo. 1816; pp. 159-61. 

139 Elem. Physiol., p. vii. lib. xxviii. \ xxii. 

140 Influence of Climate on the Human Species and on the varieties of Man arising from it, Lon- 

don, 8vo., 1812; p. 16. 

141 Nalurgeschichte des Menschen Handbuch der popularen anthropologic, Hempten, 8vo., 

1831 ; ii. pp. 323-243. 

142 Natuur-en Geschiedkundig Onderzoek aangaande den Oorspronkenlijkcn stam van het Men- 

schelifk Geslachl, Haarlem, 8vo., 1810, p. 176. 



448 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Serres, 143 Herder, Carpenter, and many other writers, of more or less 
note, upon physiological. To these, although his proper locus standi 
should be under the letter A, may be added Dr. Hall, 144 the learned 
editor of Bonn's London edition of Pickering's Races of Man. 145 
An eminent and far-travelled naturalist, accustomed to observe facts 
and weigh evidence equitably, the latter has maintained strict neu- 
trality in describing the " eleven races of men " seen by himself : 
and the best proof of the high value attached to Dr. Pickering's 
opinion, no less than of his impartiality, is, that passages of his work 
have been cited by Morton in support of diversity, and by others of 
the unity of mankind. 

There is a third hypothesis to which it is still more difficult to 
assign a place. Emanating from the schools of transcendental ana- 
tomy, none but embryologists are competent to discuss its mani- 
festations. Posited in the language of Dr. Knox, 146 its logical conse- 
quences would certainly demonstrate an unity of human origins ; 
but upon principles, it strikes me, more disagreeable to theologers 
than even the establishment of diversity itself! 

"'There is but one animal,' said Geoffroy, 'not many;' and to this 
vast and philosophic view, the mind of Cuvier himself, towards the 
close of life, gradually approached. It is, no doubt, a correct one. 
Applied to man, the doctrine amounts to this, — Mankind is of one 
family, one origin. In every embryo is the type of all the races of 

148 Le Moniteur, Paris, 3 Fev., 1855; Feuilleton, "Museum d'histoire naturelle — Cours 
d'Anthropologie de M. Serres" — " M. Serres a declare tout d'abord ses convictions en ce qui 
touche Vuniti humaine. II y croit fermement, et s'indigne (!) parfois contre eeux qui osent 
elever la-dessus 1' ombre d'une doute." This virtuous indignation sits well on the author of 
Analomie comparee du Cerveau dans les 4 classes des Animaux Verlebres (Paris, 1824 — see At- 
las, p. 40, figs. 264, 266; and PI. xiv., figs. 264-6), who, under the head, which he was 
unable to procure, of an " encepbale du lion (felis leo)" drawn a fourth of its size, actually 
substituted that of a cat ; as some of his malicious colleagues of the Academic des Sciences 
proved in public session ! 

i« "An Analytical Synopsis of the Natural History of Man" — London, 12mo., 1851 ; pp. 
xxvii-xliii — being a sort of rifacimento of "Interesting Facts connected with the Animal 
Kingdom ; with some remarks on the Unity of our Species " (London, 8vo., 1841 ; pp. 93- 
102 ; indeed, passim to p. 206) : — which appropriately ends with a saying of '-the preacher, 

' The black man is God's image like ourselves [!] though carved in ebony.' " 

Does he really mean what he says ? Has he ever thought of the converse of this anti- 
quated Jewish proposition (Gen. i. 26) ? If so, we part company in conceptions of Creative 
Power (see "Types," p. 564): and I leave our preacher to translate a French commentary 
— " ' Dieu crea Vhomme selon son image,' et Vkomme le lui a bien rejidu!" 

145 United States Exploring Expedition, vol. ix., Boston, 4to., 1848. 

us Races of Men, Phil, ed., 1850; pp. 297-8. For the contrary argument, see Notiveau 
Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe, par Aj. de Gr. et P. (translators of Lyell's Principles 
of Geology), Paris, 1836 ; ii. pp. 36-47 — " De la permanence des Especes, en d'autres termes, 
jusqu'a quel point les especes peuvent-elles etre modinees?" 



THE POLYGENISTS. 449 

men ; the circumstances determining these various races of men, as 
they now, and have existed, are as yet unknown ; but they exist, no 
doubt, and must be physical; regulated by secondary laws, not 
changing, slowly or suddenly, the existing order of things. The 
idea of new creations, or of any creation saving that of living 
matter, is wholly inadmissible. * * * In conclusion : the permanent 
varieties of men, permanent at least seemingly during the historic 
period, originate in laws elucidated in part by embryology, by the 
laws of the unity of organization, in a word, by the great laws of 
transcendental anatomy." 

Between Dr. Knox's embryonic suggestions, and the " develop- 
ment theory" espoused by a previous defender of unity, m it is not 
easy to strike the line of demarcation. Certain, however, is it 
that this brilliant writer, whatever may have been his success, in 
supplementary editions of his daring book, while repelling assaults 
upon his accuracy in. other fields of speculative science, broke down 
hopelessly when he treated on mankind, — the authorities cited by 
him being sufficient testimony that his reading on ethnology was 
exceedingly limited; and, still more unfortunately, it is patent that 
through assumption of a single origin for all the races of men, he 
makes humanity itself an exception to the so-called law of organic 
development which his antecedent pages, with singular ingenuity, 
had endeavored to establish. His "unity" becomes, in consequence, 
a non-sequitur ; whereas (without committing myself to any opinion 
on a theory which Agassiz 149 pronounced to be "contrary to all the 
modern results of science"), had the author of "Vestiges" sought, in 
palseontological discoveries and in historical inductions, for evidences 
that sundry inferior races of men preceded, in epoch, the superior, I 
will not say that he could, eleven years ago, have proved a new pro- 
position, of which science, even yet, has only caught some glimmer- 
ings ; but he would, at all events, have satisfied the requirements of 
consistency. 

Yet another monogenistic point of view has been recently pre- 
sented,— to myself, however, not very intelligible. " I do not, there- 
fore," 150 writes Dr. Draper, " contemplate the human race as consist- 

148 Vestiges of Creation, New York ed., 1845; "Hypothesis of the Development of the 
Vegetable and Animal kingdoms;" and, for man, pp. 223-32, compared "with p. 177. 

149 Types of Mankind, " The natural provinces of the Animal World, and their relation to 
the different types of Man," p. Ixxvi: — republished in substance by Mr. James Hey wood, 
M. P., F. R. S. ; as an Appendix to vol. II, of his translation of Von Bohlen's Genesis, 
1855, and with the usual mistake of " Hottentot realm" instead of " Hottentot fauna" 
(p. 278). I have already given a previous instance of this particular oversight in our 
reviewers (supra, note 108) ; as we proceed, many others will be indicated. 

iso Human Physiology, New York, 1856, pp. 565-6. 

29 



450 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

ing of varieties, much less of distinct species ; but rather as offering 
numberless representations of the different forms which an ideal 
type can be made to assume under exposure to different conditions. 
I believe that that ideal type may still be recognised, even in cases 
that offer, when compared together, complete discordances ; and that, 
if such an illustration be permissible, it is like a general expression 
in algebra, which gives rise to different results, according as we assign 
different values to its quantities ; yet, in every one of these results, 
the original expression exists." 

My own aspirations, tempered by dear-bought experience in human 
speculation on the unknown, no longer rise, nevertheless, above the 
historical stand-point ; and, therefore, with regard to the third cate- 
gory, before propounded, viz. : " C. — Unity as a moral or metaphy- 
sical doctrine," — I feel, with Jefferson, "a decent respect for the 
opinions of mankind," 151 and, consequently, place before the reader 
their humanitarian sentiments rather than my own. 

And here it is that the soul-inspiring thoughts of the Humboldts — 
which truly "puisent leur charme dans la profondeur des senti- 
ments," 152 basing their high moral value on their touching elo- 
quence — rival St. Paul's eulogia of "love," 153 in boundless charity 
towards all mankind. " Without doubt," says Alexander von Hum- 
boldt, " there are families of peoples more susceptible of culture, more 
civilized, more enlightened ; but there are none more noble than 
others. All are equally made for liberty, for that liberty which, in a 
state of society but little advanced, appertains only to the individual ; 
but which, among those nations called to the enjoyment of veritable 
political institutions [under the royal House of Brandenburgh ?] is 
the right of the whole community." iSt 

Then "the idea of humanity" is beautifully developed by his bro- 
ther William — " This is what tends to break down those barriers 
which prejudices and interested motives of every kind have erected 
between men, and to cause humanity to be looked upon in its ensem- 
ble, without distinction of religion, of nation, of color, as one great 
brotherhood, as a single body, marching towards one and the same 
goal, the free development of the moral forces. 155 * * * Rooted in the 

151 The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, A. D. MDCCLXXVI. 
™ Cosmos, Fr. ed., I, p. 431. 

153 Not " charity," which is copied from the caritas of St. Jerome's Vulgate; but the Greek 
original dyinri. — Shaiu>e's New Testament, from Griesbach's text; pp. 323-4. — 1st Up. to the 
Corinthians, XIII, 1-13. 

154 Cosmos, Fr. ed. (supra, note 1) ; I, p. 430. 

155 Ibid, pp. 430-1; Sabine translates, from the German, "the free development of their 
moral faculties" (I, p. 356) : Otte renders, " the unrestrained development of their physical 
powers" (I, p. 358) — sic! The original text is in W. von H.'s Kawi-sprache, III, p. 426. 



THE POLYGENISTS 451 

depths of human nature, commanded at the same time by its most 
sublime instincts, this beneficent and fraternal union of the whole 
species becomes one of the grand ideas which preside over the history 
of humanity." 

Possibly in the future. I cannot find the practice of such "idea" 
by any nation but old Okeanic Utopians in the past, I have resided 
years in Africa, Europe, and America, months in Asia ; and indivi- 
dual experience only enhances, to my mind, the virtue of this law 
through its exceptions. 

A more sternly-philosophical explanation of the moral unity of 
mankind is that put forth by Agassiz. It somehow accords more 
closely with my reason ; not less, I am fain to hope, with my social 
aspirations than the prelauded citation from Cosmos. 

" "We have a right to consider the questions growing out of men's 
physical relations as merely scientific questions, and to investigate 
them without reference to either politics or religion. 

" There are two distinct questions involved in the subject which 
we have under discussion, — the Unity of Mankind, and the Diversity 
of Origin of the Human Races. These are two distinct questions, 
having almost no connection with each other, but they are con- 
stantly confounded as if they were but one. * * * 

"Are men, even if the diversity of their origin is established, to be 
considered as all belonging to one species, or are we to conclude that 
there are several different species among them? The writer has 
been in this respect strangely misunderstood. Because he has at 
one time said that mankind constitutes one species, and at another 
time has said that men did not originate from one common stock, he 
has been represented as contradicting himself, as stating at one time 
one thing, and at another time another. He would, therefore, insist 
upon this distinction, that the unity of species does not involve a unity 
of origin, and that a diversity of origin does not involve a plurality of 
species. Moreover, what we should now consider as the characteristic 
of species is something very different from what has formerly been 
so considered. As soon as it was ascertained that animals differ so 
widely, it was found that what constitutes a species in certain types 
is something very different from what constitutes a species in other 
types, and that facts which prove an identity of species in some 
animals do not prove an identity or plurality in another group. * * * 

" The immediate conclusion from these facts, however, is the dis- 
tinction we have made above, that to acknowledge a unity in man- 
kind, to show that such a unity exists, is not to admit that men have 
a common origin, nor to grant that such a conclusion may be justly 



452 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

derived from sucn premises. "We maintain, therefore, that the unity 
of mankind does not imply a community of origin for men ; we 
believe, on the contrary, that a higher view of this unity of mankind 
can be taken than that which is derived from a mere sensual con- 
nection, — that we need not search for the highest bond of humanity 
in a mere animal function, whereby we are most closely related to 
the brutes. * * * 

" Such is the foundation of a unity between men truly worthy of 
their nature, such is the foundation of those sympathies which will 
enable them to bestow upon each other, in all parts of the world, the 
name of brethren, as they are brethren in God, brethren in humanity, 
though their origin, to say the least, is lost in the darkness of the 
beginning of the world. * * * 

"We maintain, that, like all other organized beings, mankind 
cannot have originated in single individuals, but must have been 
created in that numeric harmony which is characteristic of each 
species ; men must have originated in nations, as the bees have ori- 
ginated in swarms, and as the different social plants have at first 
covered the extensive tracts over which they naturally spread. * * * 

" We have seen what important, what prominent reasons there are 
for us to acknowledge the unity of mankind. But this unity does 
not exclude diversity. Diversity is the complement of unity; foi 
unity does not mean oneness, or singleness, but a plurality in which 
there are many points of resemblance, of agreement, of identity. This 
diversity in unity is the fundamental law of nature. It can be traced 
through all the departments of nature, — in the largest divisions 
which we acknowledge among natural phenomena, as well as in 
those which are circumscribed within the most narrow limits. It is 
even the law of development of the animals belonging to the same 
species. And this diversity in unity becomes gradually more and 
more prominent throughout organized beings, as we rise from their 
lowest to their highest forms. * * * 

"Those who contend for the unity of the human race, on the 
ground of a common descent from a single pair, labor under a 
strange delusion, when they believe that their argument is favorable 
to the idea of a moral government of the world, and of the direct 
intervention of Providence in the development of mankind. Uncon- 
sciously, they advocate a greater and more extensive influence in the 
production of those peculiarities by physical agencies, than by the 
Deity himself. If their views were true, God had less to do directly 
with the production of the diversity which exists in nature, in the vege- 
table as well as in the animal kingdom, and in the human race, than 



THE POLYGENISTS. 453 

climatic conditions, and the diversity of food upon which these 
beings subsist." l56 

I am wholly at a loss in what category — whether under letter A, 
or B, or C, or anywhere else — to place the very learned Dr. Latham 
(with whose books ethnographers are of course familiar) ; chiefly 
because of his well-known habit of commencing a paragraph with 
an asserted fact, the value of which he generally manages to undo 
at its close. From the best of his numerous ethnological "catalogues 
raisonnes," I cull an illustration through which the reader may be 
able to understand my meaning, even should he fail, perhaps, in 
precisely comprehending the Doctor's: 

" If we now look back upon the ground that has been gone over, 
we shall find that the evidence of the human family having origi- 
nated in one particular spot, and having diffused itself from thence 
to the very extremities of the earth, is by no means conclusive. Still 
less is it certain that that particular spot has been ascertained. The 
present writer believes that it was somewhere in intertropical Asia 
[a long way, consequently, from Mount Ararat !], and that it was the 
single locality of a single pair [Adam and Eve?] — without, however, 
professing to have found it. Even this centre [of the author's belief] 
is only hypothetical — near, indeed, to the point which he looks upon 
as the starting point of the human migration, but by no means 
identical with it." [!] ,57 

Sometimes one finds that a thorough monogenist allows, uncon- 
sciously perhaps, an observation to escape him, which shows how 
impressions, derived from Calvinistic primary tuition, become irre- 
concilable, in his mature age, to the man of science. 

"The data of Genesis," holds Hollard, 153 "commentated upon by 
a poor science, devoid of criticism and ill-disciplined, led the way for 
those rare thinkers who, during the middle ages, attempted to under- 
stand Nature. Too commonly the commentary bewildered the text. 
Of all conceptions dating from that period [a very long one, and not 
yet ended], what has had, and must have had, the greatest success, 
is the doctrine of the chain of beings, — formulated, in these terms, 
by Father Meremberg : 

" Nullus hiatus, nulla fr actio, nulla dispersio formarum, invicem con- 
nexse sunt velut annulus annulo. In great favor among the naturalists 
of 'la renaissance,' this doctrine was professed with eclat by Charles 
Bonnet, at the end of last century ; and this philosopher attached to 
it the idea of a palingenesiac evolution of Nature. It would have 

156 Aoassiz, " The Diversity of origin of Human Races," Christian Examiner and Religious 
Miscellany, Boston, 1850, XLIX, Art. viii, pp. 110, 113, 118-9, 120, 128, 133, 131. 
151 Latham, Man and his Migrations, London, 12mo, 1851 ; p. 248. 
" 8 De VHomme, Paris, 1853, pp. 13-4. 



454 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

greatly scandalized the partisans of the chain of beings had somebody 
taught them that, owing to their conception of Nature, they would 
one day shake hands with the greatest enemies of the Christian 
religion. This conception is, in fact, far more within the logic of 
pantheism than that of our (notre) [Genevese] religious dogma. 

" To represent the three realms of nature, as if forming but one 
long series of rings linked one with another, a succession of terms 
which leave no interval between them — so greatly do the nuances 
melt, and transform themselves, the ones into the others — is, whether 
one wishes it or repudiates it, whether one knows it or be ignorant 
of it, to enter into the spirit of systems which substitute, for the 
thought of a Providential Creation, that of an animate Nature 
(as Aristotle conceived it), — a Nature which, in its ascenscional 
effort, would traverse all the imaginable terms of a continuous 
progression. 

" True or false, — and this is neither yet the moment for absolving 
nor for condemning it — the doctrine, which I have just characterized, 
must have been heartily welcomed by those naturalists who pro- 
fessed, openly, the autonomy of Nature." 

I need not beg Dr. Henry Hollard's pardon for classifying his 
anthropology under letter A ; but some sort of an apology seems 
due to the reader for my stereotypical inadvertence, through which 
a learned Protestant Helvetian happens to find his pious sen- 
timents misplaced in that part of this work consecrated to the 
letter C. 

A third conception may be gathered from passages of the vast 
work of Gustave Klemm. 159 My excellent friend, Dr. L. A. Gosse, 
of Geneva, 160 pointed them out to me during our joint studies at the 
Museum d'Histoire Naturelle : 

" It is tolerably indifferent whether mankind come down from one 
pair or from many pairs ; whether some first parents were separately 
created in America, in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe ; or whether 
the population of all these regions draws its origin from a single 
couple : but what is certain is, that there have existed on this earth 
passive races prior to the active races, and that these primitive races 
had multiplied considerably before the apparition of the latter." 
He enlarges upon the distinctions between such active and passive 

159 Allegemeine Cultur-Oeschichle der Menschheit ; 1843-52, Leipzig, 8vo., 10 vols.; I. pp. 
196, 210. 

160 Honorably and widely known in medical sciences, Dr. Gosse, whilst favoring me, at 
Paris, 1854—5, with indices to knowledge, as well as infinite other proofs of his generous heart, 
published his erudite Ussai sur les Deformations Artificielles du Crane. Our collaborator, Dr. 
J. Aitken Meigs, having undertaken its analysis, I gladly leave to him a subject on which 
the nature of my studies excludes valid opinion. 



TliE POLYGENISTS. 455 

races ; deeming these last to have been the darker in complexion, 
and inferior in conformation, and in their rapidity of growth to have 
resembled the precocity of the female sex. Hence, Klemm concludes 
that — "In studying the manners, usages, monuments, industry, or- 
ganization, traditions, creeds, and history of different peoples, I have 
become induced to admit, that all humanity which forms a whole, 
like man himself, is separated into two halves, corresponding with 
each other, one active and one passive, the one masculine and the other 
feminine." 

This theory, novel to most readers of English, may, like other 
theories, be true or false, according to the sense in which the words 
active and passive, applied to ethnic peculiarities, are comprehended 
by those who employ them. To me their application is not clear, 
unless qualified by stronger adjectives ; implying the recognition of 
superior and of inferior races : and, in such sense, M. d'Eichthal's 
conception of the difference between the White and the Negro types 
is curious and interesting : 161 

" Thus, gentlemen, the debate, although concentrated upon the 
African question, conducts us to this first conclusion, established, ex- 
plicitly or implicitly, by the defenders themselves of the two extreme 
opinions, viz : that the African negro race has attained its present civili- 
zation through the influence of the ivhite race, notably from the Arabs : 
that, in order to raise itself to a higher civilization, it has need of a new 
initiation, imparted by this same race: that, to the ivhite race, consequently, 
belongs the initiative in the development of a common civilization. It is 
very remarkable that Bitter, at the end of his work on the Geo- 
graphy of Africa, casting what he calls a retrospective glance over the 
history of this continent, arrives precisely at the same conclusion ; 
which he expresses furthermore in terms of high philosophical bear- 
ing: — 'Must it be,' asks the learned geographer, 'that civilization is 
to be brought from the exterior and inoculated, so to say, upon the 
inhabitants of the Soodan (Negro-land), because, to judge accord- 
ing to the entire development of history, the others are called upon 
to give, and these to receive?' 

" Such is, in fact, the abstract expression of the normal relation 
between the black race and the white race ; the one is passive, the 
other active in respect to it. * * * ' The black shows himself to us as 
civilizable [domesticable ?], but without the initiative faculty in point 
of civilization.' " * * * " Thus, in the most intimate of their associa- 
tions [sexual intercourse between white males and black females], 
these two races preserve the character which we have recognized in 

161 Bulletin de la SociM Ethnologique de Paris, Tome 1", Annfie 1847 ; pp. 69-70, 77, 205, 
232-4, 239-241. 



456 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

the ensemble of their destinies. The white race is Man; the black 
race is Woman. ~Ho formula can so well express the reciprocal cha- 
racteristics and the law of association between the two races. It suf- 
fices moreover to explain how one of these races has been able to be 
initiator, the other initiated ; the one active, and the other passive ; 
without its following that this relationship carries with it, as has been 
maintained, at least for the future, on the one side superiority, on 
the other inferiority." 

To the debate itself I must refer for a controversy conducted on 
all sides with rare ability and scientific decorum ; my own views find- 
ing expression, generally, in the ethnological arguments of M. Cour- 
tet de ITsle ; to be cited hereinafter. Enough has now been set forth 
on the unity side of the question ; and the reader can henceforward 
classify any less important monogenists than those herein enume- 
rated, into category A, B, or C, as best suits his appreciation of their 
merits. 

Inter alia, the ultimate philosophical results of the celebrated 
Academician and Professor, Flourens, whose microscopic examina- 
tion of the human skin in different races, supposed by complacent 
clergymen to have established an infallible recipe for proving the 
lineal descent of all mankind from "Adam and Eve," has led them, in 
England and America, almost to account him one of themselves. 
An English version, however literal, fails to do justice to the piety 
and logic of the French original. 

" All these necessary conditions, so admirably combined and pre- 
pared for the precise moment when life was to appear, prove God, 
and one sole God. They could not, seemingly, have been two. If 
they had been two, they would not have so well understood each 
other — Us ne se seraient pas si Men entendus.' nez 

Hitherto, the weight of authorities quoted has been altogether on 
the affirmative side : the polygenists, as yet, have scarcely had a 
voice on the negative. To them the next section will be devoted : 
audi alteram partem; commencing with Berard, 163 Professor of Physi- 
ology, — "I cannot suppose that a mind disengaged from prejudices, 
and from hinderances which certain extra-scientific considerations 
might interpose to liberty of thought, can entertain doubts upon the 
primitive plurality of human types." 

To the many diversitarian authorities whose language has been 
cited in Types of Mankind, coupled with the variety of polygenistic 
facts accumulated in that work and the present, there would seem 
little reason to add corroborative testimony, were it not for the sake 

162 De la Longevity Humaine, Paris, 12mo., 1855, p. 238. 

163 Couts de Physiologic, Paris, 8vo., 1850, 1, p. 463. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 457 

of showing how the advocates of this new school are rising up on 
every side, as if in derision of theocratical impediments. I will, 
therefore, merely select two whose conclusions are arrived at hy rea- 
soning from different starting-points. Dr. Prosper Lucas shall he 
the first, as one who has studied humanity closest in its generative 
laws. 164 

" The psychological diversity of races is, as we have said, as tho- 
roughly demonstrated as their physiological ; and this diversity bears 
upon all the forms of human dynamism. All the races, in a word, 
although partaking of the attributes of one and the same 'species,' 
present them under a form and at a degree which are properties of 
each of them : each one of them has its own type of sensoriety, its 
type of character, its type of intelligence, its type of activity. ISTow, 
there is not a single one in which generation does not delevope sud- 
den anomalies of the natural, and wherein we cannot observe, as in 
the physical form of its existence, different and spontaneous transi- 
tions of the moral type of one race into the moral type of another." 

M. Blanchard is our second, no less than the expression of a 
duplex authority, — his own, and Dr. Dumoutier's; whose anthropo- 
logical experiences were derived, as shown by his splendid Atlas, 165 
from accurate attention to the various types of men he beheld while 
circumnavigating the globe with Dumont d'Urville, and whose poly- 
genistic opinions were frequently elicited at the meetings of the So- 
ciete Ethnologique de Paris. 166 

" Speaking for ourselves, it is not sufficient to admit that there 
are, either a certain number of races, or several distinct species ; it 
becoming necessary to ascend still higher. In order that the ques- 
tion should be clearly posited, we will say at once that, to our eyes, 
there exist different species of men ; that these species, very proxi- 
mate to each other, form a natural genus; and that these species 
were created in the very countries in which we find them at present. 
En resume, the creation of mankind must have taken place upon an 
infinitude of points on the globe, and not upon a single point 
whence they have spread themselves, little by little, over all the 
surface of the earth. * * * 

" Through all the reasons that we have just rapidly set forth, we 
have acquired the conviction, that the human genus is a veritable 
genus, in the sense attached to this word by naturalists, and that 
this genus comprises several species. 

164 Heredite Nalurelle, i. pp. 160-1. 

165 Voyage au Pole Sud, Anthropologic, Atlas, fol., Paris, 1846; cited in Types of Mankind, 
pp. 438, &o. 

166 Bulletins, 1846-7. 



458 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

" These species must have heen necessarily created each one in 
the country in which it was destined to perpetuate itself; and hence 
then, we must admit, at the origin, a considerable number of foci 
(souches). * * * 

"We think, with DuGliS (Traite die Physiologie), that mankind 
comprehends a great number of species ; but, by what signs these 
species can be defined in an indubitable manner, no one, in the 
present state [of science], can tell, if he abstains from comparing 
only the most dissimilar." 167 

But, by way of parenthesis, as explanatory of a passing comment 
on "Vestiges of Creation," and of a remark by Klemm {supra, pp. 
454-5), that inferior human races seem in antiquity to have pre- 
ceded the superior, there are data which here may find place. 

16 ' Blanchard, Voyage au Pole Sud, corvettes V Astrolabe el la Zelee, 1837-40, — Anlhropo- 
logie, par M. le Docteur Dumoutier, Paris, 1854, pp. 19, 45, 46. 

In corroboration of what a far-travelled Doctor, M. Dumoutieb, says above, and else- 
where, in regard to the creation of a distinct species of man for each zoological country; 
no less than to fortify the positions sustained by my collaborator Dr. Nott (ante, Chapter 
IV, p. 547), as to the non-acclimation of races, and the non-cosmopolitism of man ; I sub- 
join an extract from a work by our mutual friend Dr. Boudin, which Dr. Nott had mislaid 
when his MS. was sent to the printer: 

"For a long time there has been ascribed to man the faculty of adapting himself to 
every climate, and the power of establishing his residence upon all points of the globe. 
Such credence, reposing upon no kind of experimental basis whatever, could merely consti- 
tute but a simple hypothesis ; against which, now-a-days, facts, as authentic as numerous, 
protest. Perhaps the partisans of cosmopolitism had been in too great a hurry to lend to 
a fraction of humanity, represented, by what it has been agreed upon to call, the 'Cauca- 
sian' race, that which may very well not belong save to the ensemble of mankind ; — perhaps, 
too, they had not sufficiently discriminated the laboring and agricultural man, from the 
mere transitory excursionist." Thus, in order to prove his position, Boudin cites, amongst 
other examples, — how, in Egypt, the austral negroes are, and the Caucasian Memlooks 
were, unable to raise up even a third generation, — how, in Corsica, French families vanish 
beneath Italian surnames. Where are the descendants of Romans, or Vandals, or Greeks, 
in Africa? In modern Arabia (1830), after Mohammed Ali had got clear of the Morea- 
war, 18,000 Arnaoots (Albanians) were soon reduced to some 400 men. At Gibraltar 
(1817), a negro regiment was almost annihilated by consumption. In 1841, during three 
weeks on the Niger, 130 Europeans out of 145 caught African fever, and 40 succumbed; 
whilst, out of 158 negro sailors, only 11 were affected, and none died. In 1809, the British 
Walchereen expedition failed, in the Netherlands, through one kind of marsh fever; about 
the same period that, at St. Domingo, 20 French Generals, and 15,000 rank and file, died 
in two months by another malarial disease. Of 30,000 to 32,000 Frenchmen, but some 
8000 survived exposure to that Antillian island ; while the Dominicanized African negro, 
Toussaint l'Ouverture, re-transported to Europe, was perishing from the chill of his prison 
in France. (Pathologie compare'e, Paris, 1849, pp. 1-4). 

Again, "already the facts acquired by science establish, in a manner irrevocable, that 
the diverse races, which constitute the great family of humanity, obey especial laws, under 
the triple aspect of birth, mortality, and pathological aptitudes." France uses negro 
soldiers at Guyana and Senegal ; England employs, like the Eomans of old, the natives of 
each colony, to perform arduous military works- — confining (cceteris paribus) for all hard 
labor, tropical soldiers to the Tropics, and extra-tropically-born soldiery to servile duty, 



THE POLYGENISTS. 459 



PART II. 

Great and multifarious are the changes in palaeontology, as in 
other sciences, since Georges Cuvier wrote: 

" That which astounds is, that amongst all these Mammifers, of 
which the greater part possess now-a-days their congeners in hot 
countries, there has not been a single Quadrumane ; that there has 
not been gathered a single bone, a single tooth of a Monkey, were 
they but some bones or some teeth of monkeys, of now-lost 
species." 168 

Barely five years after the decease, in 1832, of this grand natu- 
ralist, fossil Simiae turned up, during 1837, in France and in Hind- 
ostan ! 

In eighteen subsequent years of exploration, many more have 
been discovered ; enumerated in the subjoined works' 69 as genus 
Hapcile, 2 species ; Gallithrix primsevus Protopithecus, 2 ; Cebus, 1 ; 
found in South America : — Macacus eocoenus, Pitheeus antiquus, 2 
species, &c. ; in England, France, or in the Sub-Himalayan range. 
Wagner had previously indicated the existence of other fossil 
monkeys in Greece ; but early in the present year, M. Gaudry 
reports to the Academie des Sciences, his having exhumed, at the 
"gite fossilifere de Pikermi," 170 specimens of Mesopithecus major 
and Mesopithecus pentelicus ; mixed up with remains of hyaena, 
mastodon, rhinoceros, hog, hippotherium, bos-marathonicus, giraffe, 
and probably of birds. 

Geologists can now determine the relative epochas of each speci- 
men, according to the formations in which the several genera of 
such fossil monkeys appear; but De Blainville states that, while 
these of Brazil are more recent, being met with in the diluvium of 
caverns, — "those of India and Europe lie in a medium tertiary 
fresh-water deposit, and consequently are of an age long anterior to 

only where the climate accords with that of their race and birth-place. At Sierra Leone, 
the mortality of negroes, compared to that of whites, is as 30 to 483 ; i. e. as 1 against 16! 
{Physiologie el Pathologic comparers des Races humaines, pp. 1-7). 

168 Discours sur les Revolutions de la surface du Globe, Paris, 1830, 6th ed., p. 351. 

169 Marcel de Serkes, Essai sur les Cavernes a Osseme?ils, Paris, 8vo, 3d ed., 1838; pp. 
226-7: — De Blainville, Osteographie, " Mammiferes-Priniates," Paris, 4to, 1841; pp. 49- 
66: — D'Oreigny, Diet. Univ. a" Hist. Nat. ; Paris, 1847; X, pp 669-70, "Quadrumanes 
fossiles:" — Heck, Iconographic Encyclopedia, transl. Baird, New York, 1851; II, pp. 492- 
8: — Gervais-, Trois rignes de la Nature, Mammiferes, I e partie, Paris, 1854; pp. 12-13. 

170 Letter to M. Elie de Beaumont; Alhenwum Francais, 1 Mars, 1856; pp. 167. 



400 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

the last catastrophe, which is supposed to have given the present 
shape to our seas and our continents." 

This is confirmed by a curious observation of Marcel de Serres, 171 
that while, as yet, monkeys have been found " only on the ancient 
continent in the fossil state, it is uniquely in the humatile state they 
have been recognized on the new." 

It is, therefore, no longer contestable, that fossil monkeys exist, 
and in abundance. Other genera, without question, will be dis- 
covered in the ratio that portions of the earth, and by far the most 
extensive, become accessible to the geologist's hammer. Those 
barbarous regions which living anthropoid monkeys now inhabit — 
viz. : Guinea, Congo, and Loango, where the Chimpanzee [Troglo- 
dytes niger); the Gaboon river-lands, where the G-orilla Crina; and 
the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, where two, or even three [supra, 
Agassizs' letter], species of the Orang-utan (Satyrus rufus, and 
Satyrus bicolor); are found 172 — being at present wholly inaccessible 
to geological investigation, it is premature to affirm or deny the 
existence of such anthropomorphous grades, as the above, between 
the "genus Homo" or bimanes, and those lower genera of quadru- 
manes already known to palaeontology, in the fossil state. Such 
a discovery would fortify, although its absence does not affect, the 
propositions I am about to submit. 

Leaving aside De Lamark's much-abused development-theory, 173 
all naturalists agree that, whether in the incommensurable cycles of 
geological time anterior to our planet's present condition, or during 
the chronologically-indefinable period that mankind have been its 
later occupants, there is a manifest progression of organism upwards 
from the Eadiata to the Articulata, from these to the Mollusca, and 
again from these last to the Vertebrata. 174 At the summit of verte- 
brated animals, after ascending once more through the Fishes, the 
Reptiles, the Birds, and the Mammifers, stands Man, himself the 
highest of the mammalian division — "sole representative of his 
genus" if Prof. Owen pleases, but composed, -notwithstanding, of 
many distinct types, each subdivisible into many races. 

Now, whether we look up or down the tableau of living nature, or 
drag out of the rocky bowels of our earth the whole series of fossil 
animals known to palaeontology, nearest to mankind, among marn- 

171 Cosmogonie de Mo'ise compare'es aux fails ge'ologiques, Paris, 8vo, 2d ed., 1841 ; I, pp. 
162-7. 

172 Chenu, Encyclopedic d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. " Quadrumanes," Primates; pp. 30-52. 

173 Generously explained by Haldeman, Recent Freshwater Mollusca (supra), pp. 6-8. 

174 See the Regne Animal de M. le Baron Cuvier, dispose en Tableaux methodiques par I. 
Aohille Comte, Paris, fol. 1840; 1st Plate, "Introduction." 



THE POLYGERISTS. 461 

malia, in every feature of organization, spring up the Monkeys in 
bold relief; as Man's closest sequence in the descending scale of zoo- 
logical gradation; and, likewise, so far as science yet has ascertained, 
as one of Man's immediate precursors in the ascending line of our 
planet's chronology. Each of these two points, however, requires 
some elucidation, in order to eschew deductions that are not mine. 
For the first, one reference will explain the view I concur in ; it is 
G-ervais's. 175 

" We know nothing well except through comparison, and, in order 
to compare objects correctly, one must begin by placing them near 
together. This is not to say that Man is a Monkey, and still less 
that a Monkey is a Man, even degraded; because, upon studying 
with care the one and the other, it will be recognized without diffi- 
culty that if Man resembles the highest animals [the Primates], 
through the totality of his organization, he differs from them above 
all in the details ; and that, even more endowed than the greater 
number of these in almost every respect, he surpasses them essen- 
tially by the very perfection of his structure. His brain, as well as 
his intelligence, assigns him a rank apart. He is indeed, as Ovid says, 

Sanctius his animal, mentisque capaoius altse. 

It is well known, on the other hand, that, to Linnseus and his con- 
temporaries, the limits of genus were much less narrowed than they 
are for naturalists of our day. The generic union of Man and of other 
\sic\ Monkeys would be, therefore, at the present state of science, 
entirely contrary to the rules of classification. * * * "(Monkeys) are 
easily recognized by their organization, of which the principal traits 
accord with those that the human genus displays in such an elevated 
degree of perfection. Their brain and their other deeply-placed 
organs; their exterior appearance, and, especially, the form of then' 
head ; the position and number of their teats ; their thumbs at the 
superior members, more frequently than not opposable to the other 
fingers ; their station approaching more and more the vertical, but 
without ever reaching it completely; and a certain community of intel- 
lectual aptitudes; everything, in these animals, announces an incon- 
testable resemblance with Man, and a superiority as regards other 
quadrupeds. Albeit, this similitude diminishes in proportion as one 
descends through the series of genera that compose the family of 
Monkeys ; and, whilst ever preserving the fundamental traits of the 
group to which they belong, the lowest species [the Ouistites, for in- 
stance] show by their intelligence as much as by their brain, in their 

175 Hist. Nat. des MammiferZs, pp. 49, and 7-8. 



462 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

shapes as well as in the structure of their principal organs, an evident 
inferiority, if one compares them with the Primates., and beyond all 
with Man." 

Science, therefore, at the present hour, ceases to go back to the 
long-exploded and (considering the epoch of its advocates) over-sati- 
rized notions of Monboddo, Rousseau, or Moscati. 176 Such historical 
theory only continues to afford pabulum for homily- writers, who, 
groping still amidst Auguste Comte's 177 sub-metaphysical strata, 
imagine, not perhaps unreasonably, that some of their readers have 
learned nothing since the XVLTIth century. Even in the time of 
Voltaire — to whom men merely seemed to be so many monkeys 
without tails — of the apparently tail-less quadrumana (Orang, Chim- 
panzee, and Gorilla), but one species (except, of course, Tyson's 
Chimpanzee, 1698, 178 and Buffbn's, 1740) was known to France ; 
and that one, the Orang-utan, — belonging to the prince of Orange, 
1776 — too imperfectly for him to perceive, between the " lord of 
creation" and his caricature, a still closer analogy: or, again, for the 
immortal bugbear of pseudo-pietists to comprehend that, if the 
absence of such exterior appendage in the above three primates does 
not the more constitute a true "monkey," neither does its presence, 
in the several authentic examples cited by Lucas, 179 the less consti- 
tute a true "man." So that, while man, as "the sole representative 
of his genus," possesses no tail, there are individual instances that 
bring the case much nearer home than the interesting fact for 
which the latest English partisan of successive transformations 1S0 en- 
countered obloquy ; viz. : that " the bones of a caudal extremity exist, 
in an undeveloped state, in the os coccygis of the human subject." 
Why, if such " deviations" as that melancholy case of the "porcupine 
family," or those worn-out specimens of " sexidigital individuals," 

176 Zimmerman, Zool. geog., p. 194. 

1,7 Cours de Philosophic Positive, Paris, 1830; I, pp. 3-5. 

178 Martin, Man and Monkeys, London, 8vo., 1841 ; pp. 379 and 402. 

179 Heredite Nalurelle, I, pp. 319-20 :— referring to Serres, and to Is. Geof. Saint Hilaire. 
"Le deVeloppement congenial de cet appendice (a tail) se lie en effet au rapport tres-con- 
stant, qu'il (Serres) a demontre', entre revolution de la moelle epiniere et celle de la queue. 
La moelle epiniere se prolonge, dans l'origine, jusqu'a l'extrtjmite' du canal vertebral, chez 
tous les animaux de la classe ou il existe, et tous, a cette e"poque de la vie embryonaire, se 
trouvent ainsi munis d'une queue plus ou moins longue selon qu'ulterieurement, et d'apres 
les especes, le prolongement de la moelle se maintient ou se retire, l'axe vertebral est ou 
n'est pas pourvu d'un appendice caudal. * * * Et il arrive ainsi quelquefois (says I. G. 
St. Hilaire) que la moelle epiniere, conservant sa premiere disposition, s'e'tende encore, 
chez rbomme, au moment de la naissance, jusqu'a l'extre'mite' du coccyx. Dans ce cas, la 
colonne vertebrale reste termine'e par nne queue." 

180 Vestiges of Creation, 1st New York edition, 12mo, p. 148. In speaking of "apparently 
tail-less monkeys," it may be well to refer to the skeletons of Orang-satyrus, Troglodytes 
niger, and Gorilla Gina, in Gervais, op. tit., pp. 14, 26, 32. 



THE POL YGENIST S. 463 

have been paraded by every monogenist, from Zimmerman 18 ' to Pri- 
chard, 183 in proof of how a new race of men might, according to them, 
originate — why, I repeat, do they not observe consistency of argu- 
ment, whilst always violating their own law of "species"' — i.e., per- 
manency of normal type — and allow that a Parisian saddler, 183 or the 
late Mr. Barber of Inverness, 181 might and ought to have procreated 
entire generations of new human "species" with tails ? Partial is the 
unity-school to natural analogies, accusing polygenists of tendency 
to disregard them. Our " chart of Monkeys," further on, will at 
least show that I am not obnoxious to this grave charge. 

In the interim, there are but two living savans, that I am aware of 
— the one a naturalist and courageous voyager; 185 the other, if not 
exactly an archaeologist, a much more famous champion of ortho- 
doxy, 186 — who believe in the existence, past or present, of whole 
nations decorated with tails. The former, when at Bahia, heard, from 
the veracious lips of imported Haoussa negroes, of the " Niams- 
Niams, m oil hommes a queue;" who still whisk their tails in Africa, 
about thirteen days' journey from Kano (not far from that Island 

181 Op. cit., p. 172. 

182 Researches into the Physical History of Man, 1st edition, 1813; pp. 72-5: — In the 2d 
edition (op. cit., 1826, I, pp. 204-7), Prichard found out that the "porcupine family" was 
flourishing in its 3d generation ! 

183 Lucas, op. cit., I, pp. 137-8, 320-2. Instances of homines caudali: the celebrated 
corsair Cruvillier de la Cioutat, of a negro named Mohammed, of a French officer, of M. 
de Barsabar and his sister, and, lastly, of an attorney at Aix, surnamed Berard, whose 
tail had (as in the case Schenckii Monslror. hist, memorab., II, 34) the curly shape of a 
pig's. 

181 Compare Monboddo, Of the Origin and Progress of Language, Edinburgh, 8vo, 2d ed., 
1774; I, pp. 258-69, for the men with long tails at Nicobar! But the following is less 
apochryphal: "And I could produce legal evidence, by witnesses yet living, of a man in 
Inverness, one Barber, a teacher of mathematics, who had a tail, about half a foot long, 
which he carefully concealed during his life ; but was discovered after bis death, which 
happened about twenty years ago." (P. 262, note.) 

185 De Castelnau, in Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic, Paris, Juillet, 1851, p. 26. Camels, 
it is well known, were not introduced into Africa until Ptolemaic times (Types of Mankind, 
pp. 254, 511-13, 729). Those seen by M. de Castelnau's narrator, close by "les hommes 
a queue," must have been stray-aways from Tuarik, Foolah, or Arab encampments; be- 
cause no Negro race has ever perceived the value of this animal, nor adopted its use, 
although for centuries employed against them by their surrounding oppressors ; thus allow- 
ing a stupid repugnance to testify to their own intellectual inferiority (Conferre d'Eichthal, 
Eisl. et Origine des Foulahs, Paris, 8vo., 1841 ; pp. 259-60, note). 

>» Paravet, op. cit., 1852, pp. 34, 501. 

m These "Niams-Niams" are fabulous (like the Yahoo enemies of the virtuous Houy- 
hnhnms) African cannibals, by different Negro tribes "severally called Bcmrem, Lemlem, 
Demdern, Yemyem, or N'yumn'um" (W. Desbokotjgh Cooley, Negro-land of the Arabs, 1841 ; 
pp. 112, 135: Gijddoh, Oiia JEgypliaca, London, 1849; p. 125, note). Since this was 
written, I hear that M. Tremaux, the latest explorer of the upper Nile (with Brun-Rollet, 
a Sardinian merchant at Khartoom), has, still more recently, exploded the notion of "la 
hommei & queue" in that region also. 



464 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

visited by Mr. Gulliver, in his "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms") ; where 
our naturalist's informants had also beheld "wild camels." The 
latter, senior among "MM. les Membres de l'lnstitut," as well as free 
from any sins but Sinology, happening to meet in Paris with a negro 
of singular conformation, compares him with perfectly authentic 
block-printed plates of ancient foreign nations in Mongolia, known 
to Chinese encyclopedists before an Encyclopxdia, or even a geogra- 
phical dictionary, had been struck off in Europe. A copy of this 
work, the Sau Tsai Too Hwyy, is in the possession of my valued col- 
league M. Pauthier, the historian of China ; with whom I have en- 
joyed a laugh over its numerous designs of men with tails, while he 
read me the text ; which, being in Chinese ideographics, does not 
strictly fall within Voltaire's malicious definition — "Les dictionnaires 
geographiques ne sont qire des erreurs par ordre alphabetique." Mr. 
Birch was so kind, subsequently, as to show me another copy in the 
library of the British Museum. 168 

For the second proposition, viz : that, in palaeontology, monkeys 
appear to be the forerunners of man, a more serious tone of analysis 
must be adopted. 

"We have seen how Cuvier, at his demise in 1832, did not antici- 
pate the discovery, made five years later, of fossil monkeys ; which 
has since established, in several gradations of genera and of epoch, a 
link between extinct quadrumanes and living bimanes. Inasmuch as 
that great Naturalist, correct in his deductions from the data known 
to him, committed an error, as it turned out afterwards, about fossil 

188 This is one of the Sinie authorities (as quoted, that is, by De Gtjignes) just referred 
to by an eloquent divine, at Hope Chapel, New York, in his 2d lecture on "The Ethnology 
of America," wherein he proves that our American Indians are only a colony, "450 and 500" 
A.D., of Hindostanic Budhists, since run wild! (New York Herald, Feb. 6, 1857.) 

In order to remove at once any latent suspicion that, at the present day, erudition is 
necessary to know every piece of nonsense that has been written on the ante-Columbian 
colonization of America from any part of the world — Chinese, Tartar, Japanese, Israelitish, 
Norwegian, Irish, Welsh, Gaulish, Hi'spanian, Polish, Polynesian, Phoenician, Atalantic, &c, 
&c. — let me refer critics, who may be acquainted only with French, to " Recherches sur les 
Antiquite's de l'Arnerique du Nord et de PAmerique du Sud, et sur la population primitive 
de ces deux continents, par M. D. B. Warden," formerly the very learned U. S. Consul at 
Paris, — in the folio Anliquiles Mezicaines (see Pulszky's Chap. II, p. 183, ante). Humboldt 
had written long previously — "It cannot be doubted, that the greater part of the nations 
of America belong to a race of men, who, isolated ever since the infancy of the world from 
the rest of mankind [and how, during such infancy, could the fathers of American Indians 
come here from Mount Ararat?], exhibit, in the natural diversity of language, in their 
features, and the conformation of their skull, incontestable proofs of an early and complete 
separation." (Researches concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the ancient Inhabitants 
of America, London, 1814, I, pp. 249-50.) Through the 3d Lecture (New York Herald, 
Feb. 9, 1857), I perceive how, even at this date, it is not yet known, in New York, that the 
comicalities about the god "Votan" alias "Ballani," are merely the pious inventions of 
an illiterate Jesuit priest ! On whom hereafter. 



THE POLTGENISTS 465 

monkeys, may lie not have also made another in regard to fossil 
man ? His convictions were : 189 

" There is not either any man [among these fossil-bones] : all the 
hones of our species that have been collected with those of which we 
have spoken found themselves therein accidentally, and their num- 
ber is moreover exceedingly small ; which would not assuredly have 
been the case if men had made establishments in the countries inha- 
bited by these animals. Where then at that time was mankind ?" 

We cannot answer decisively, as yet — " with those monkeys, to be 
sure, whose fossil and humatile remains, unrevealed to Cuvier, have 
been since discovered ;" but this much we can do, — show that while, 
on the one hand, later researches have vastly extended Cuvier's nar- 
row estimate of the antiquity of mankind upon earth ; on the other, 
the gradations of epoch and of species, from the tertiary deposits 
where fossil simiee are found in Europe, upwards to recent formations 
in which, according to a preceding remark of Marcel de Serres, those 
humatile monkeys have turned up in America, there is a gradual pro- 
gression of "species" that brings these last nearly to specific identity 
with some of those simiee platyrhinm living in Brazilian forests at 
the present day. 

We can do more. After obtaining an almost unbroken chain of 
osteological samples, from living species of callithrix and pithecus in 
Sduth America, back to Lund's callithrix primosvus and protopithicus 
of humatile Brazilian deposits, and thence upwards through the 
various extinct genera of simiee catarrhinee found in a true fossil state 
in Europe and Hindostan; we are enabled, upon turning round and 
looking at the ascending scale of relative antiquity in human remains, 
— from the Egyptian pyramid to the Belgian and Austrian bone- 
caverns, from Scandinavian and Celtic barrows to the vestiges of 
man's industry extant in French diluvial drift, and from the old Ca- 
ribsean semi-fossilized skeletons of Guadaloupe, coupled with the 
Brazilian semi-fossilized crania (Lund) 190 as well as with the semi- 
fossilized human jaws of Florida (Agassiz, in "Types"), — to esta- 
blish, for man's antiquity, two points, parallel in some degree with 
what has been done for that of the simiee, viz : 1st, That the exist- 
ence of mankind on earth is carried back at least to the humatile 
stage of osseous antiquity on both old and new continents ; and 2d, 
that, by strange and significant coincidence, like the genera callithrix 
and pithecus, the living species and the dead, in Monkeys, all huma- 
tile specimens of Man in America correspond, in race, with the same 

189 Discours sur les Revolutions, pp. 351-2, and 131-9. 

190 "Notice sur les ossements humaines fossiles, trouvfe ilans line Caverne du Br&il" — 
Bulletin de la Soc. K. des Antiquaires du Nord, 1845-9, pp. 49-77.. 

30 



466 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

aboriginal Indian group still living on this continent. Such is what 
will be attempted in the following pages. 

But, before proceeding, we must rid ourselves of some precon- 
ceived encumbrances about chronology ; because "there are persons 
in America * * * ; persons whose intellects or fancies are employed 
in the contemplation of complicated and obscure theories of human 
origin, existence, and development — denying the very chronology 
which binds man to G-od, and links communities together by indisso- 
luble moral obligations." "Pretty considerable" performances for 
Mr. Schoolcraft's " chronology" ! 191 

Our national Didymus and XAAKENTEPOS — he, too, of brazen 
bowels, in literary fabrication — believing that "the heavens and the 
earth" were created exactly at six o'clock on Sunday morning. (1st 
day), in the month of September, at the equinox of the year b. c. 
4004, m would be much distressed if he knew what his only patron- 
izer's (Chevalier Bunsen's) opinion is, viz. — " That a concurrence of 
facts and of traditions demands, for the iNbaehian period, about ten 
millennia before our era ; and, for the beginning of our race, another 
ten thousand years, or very little more." 193 

The startling era claimed, in 1845, by Bunsen, for Egypt's first 
Pharaoh, Menes, b. c. 3643, sinks into absolute insignificance before 
the 20,000 years now insisted upon by him for man's terrestrial 
existence. Palaeontologists of the Mortonian school will cheerfully 
accept Bunsen's chronological extension, notwithstanding their in- 
ability to comprehend the process by which the learned German 
obtains that definite cipher, or the reason why the human period 
should not be prolonged a few myriads of years more. Brought 
down nearer to our generation it cannot, without violating all rea- 
sonable induction regarding the ante-monumental state of Egypt ; m 
no less than from the remote era assigned by Prof. Agassiz 195 to 
the conglomerate, brought to his cabinet from Florida, inclosing 
human "jaws with perfect teeth, and portions of a foot." 

191 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Philadelphia, elephant 4to, 1854 
— " Ethnographical researches concerning the Red Man in America ;" Fourth Report, p. ix. 

182 Rev. Dr. Lightfoot, Harmony of the Foure Evangelistes, London, 1644 ; Part I, last 
page. 1st, Compare Basnage [Hist, and Religion of the Jews, pp. 107-8), on the disputations 
between the Carai'tes (lileralists) and the Rabbinists (traditionists), whether the world was 
created in March or in September : 2d, — if it be desired to ascertain on what grounds 
the rabbis make the 1st Sept. the day of creation, the solution is R. Jacoub's Baal Halurim 
(printed at Venice, 1540) ; who proves it through the Kabbala on the first word of Genesis, 
BeReSAITA — because, on transposing letters, Aleph is equivalent to "first," and be tisri 
means "in September"! (Richard Simon, op. cit., I, p. 882.) 

193 Outlines of the Philosophy of History, London, 1854 ; II, p. 12. 

194 Types of Mankind, pp. 687-9. 

1 95 Op. cit., pp. 352-3. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 467 

"With respect to Nilotic alluvials, my suggestion of geological 
researches 196 has heen wrought out, since 1851, by an old Egyptian 
colleague, Hikekyan-Bey, one of Seid Pasha's civil engineers, with 
effective government aid, at Heliopolis and Memphis, under direc- 
tion of Mr. Leonard Horner, of the Royal Society, 197 which placed a 
liberal grant of money at this gentleman's disposal. Father-in-law 
of Sir Charles Lyell, and father of the accomplished ladies who 
translated Lepsius's Briefe aus JEgypten, ^thiojrien, &c., 198 no one 
could be more qualified for the undertaking, — particulars concerning 
which may be also read in Brugsch, 199 who visited Metraheni while 
the works and surveys were going on. The royal names dis-interred 
are given by him ; and they belong to the XlXth-XXth dynasties, 
or the 15th-12th century b. c. ; but the depth, beneath the surface, at 
which they were found, indicates a much more remote antiquity for 
the accumulation of soil below them. During my recent sojourn in 
London, Mr. Horner, among other courtesies, was pleased to show 
rne the interesting specimens collected, and to favor me with an 
insight into the probable results. These were to appear in a later 
number of the Royal Society's Transactions. They will establish an 
unexpected antiquity for the Nile's deposits ; especially as Mr. Hor- 
ner, with Lepsius and all of us, takes the Xllth Dynasty at about 
2300 before Christ; which, as he correctly observes, "according to 
the marginal chronology printed in the latest editions of our Bibles, 
is about 300 years before the death of Noah." 2 " 

Again, to the ante-Abrahamic age of the same XHth dynasty, 
more than 4000 years backwards from our own day, belong those 
eighteen hieroglyphical inscriptions, recording, upon the rocks near 
Samneh, for a period of about fifty years, " the height to which the 
river rose in the several years of which they bear the date. Inde- 
pendently of the novelty of these inscriptions, which are very short, 
they possess great value in enabling us to compare the ancient ele- 
vations of the waters of the Nile with those of our time ; for the oldest 
of these records dates back to a period of 2200 years before the 
Christian era. Thus, the measurements I have made with the great- 
est care, and which at this place were taken with comparative facility, 
have given the remarkable result, that the average rise of the Nile, 

196 Otia JEgyptiaca, 1849, pp. 67-8. 

M ' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. exlv, Part I, London, 4to, 1855; 
pp. 105-38. 

198 Letters from Egypt, &c. — revised by the author ; and translated by Leonora and 
Joanna B. Horner; London, 12mo, 1853. 

199 Reiseberichle aus jEgypten (1853-4), Leipzig, 8vo, 1855; pp. 62-79. 

200 "Mr. Horner on the Alluvial Land of Egypt," op. cit., p. 123. 



468 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

4000 years ago, was 7 metres, 30 cent, (or about 24 English feet) 
higher than it is at the present day." * * * "It explains a fact that 
had previously surprised me, viz : that in all the valley of Nubia, the 
level of the soil upon both shores, although it consists entirely of 
alluvium deposited by the Nile, is much more elevated than at the 
highest level of the river in the best year of modern inundation." 201 

I have a distinct recollection of localities in Lower Nubia, — ex- 
plored with Mr. A. C. Harris during our shooting excursions as far 
as "Wadee Haifa (2d cataract), in 1839^40 — where the alluvium, 
deposited by the Nile anciently, upon the rock, was at great distance 
from, and at a higher level than, inundations at this day : hut the 
phenomenon merely excited surprise ; nor, until Chev. Lepsius dis- 
covered the inscriptions at Samneh, was an unaccountable circum- 
stance, now of great value in geology as well as chronology, either 
important or explicable. Eighteen years later, it helps to mark 
degrees of time on Nature's calendar; and, conjointly with the hiero- 
glyphs of Manetho's Xllth dynasty, cut at Samneh, to fix a date for 
the ante-Noachian existence of civilized humanity upon earth. 

Adjacent to these inscriptions stand the coetaneous fortifications 
of Samneh, built with great military skill and on an immense scale, 
by these Pharaohs of the Xllth dynasty, as their frontier bulwark 
of the south against the attacks of Nubian hordes. M. de Vogue, a 
competent judge, has re-explored the localities ; 202 confirming in every 
respect the anterior discovery of Chev. Lepsius. 

Geological investigation of Egypt, therefore, begins to furnish 
abundant elbow-room for Plato's long disregarded assertion, put 
into the Greek month of a native Egyptian priest too ! — "And the 
annals even of our own city [Sais] have been preserved 8000 years 
in our sacred writing. I will briefly describe the laws and most 
illustrious actions of those States which have existed 9000 years." 203 
— "And you will, by observing, discover, that what have been 
painted and sculptured there [in Egypt] 10,000 years ago, — and I 
say 10,000 years, not as a word, but a fact, — are neither more beau- 

»' Lepsius, letter to Dr. S. G. Morton, "Philse, Sept. 15, 1844;" Proceedings of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Jan. 21, 1845: — See references to Lepsius's 
later works, in Types of Mankind, p. 692 ; and, for faithful copies of the inscriptions them- 
selves, the Prussian Denkmiiler, Abth. iv., Bd, 2, Bl. 137, 139, 151. 

202 " Les fortifications antiques a Samneh (Nubie) " — Bulletin Archeologique de VAthenceum 
Francai.i, Paris, Sept., 1855; pp. 81-4, PI. v. Mr. Osburn's romantic inference, about the 
connection between these works and Joseph's seven years of famine, merely proves that 
this learned, if volcanic, Coptologist is no geologist (Monumental History of Egypt, London, 
8vo., 1854; ii. pp. 35, 132-9. 

203 "The Timseus," Plato's works, Davis transl. (Bohn) London, 1849, vi., p. 327. 



THE POL YGENIST S. 469 

tiful, nor more ugly, than those turned out of hand at the present 
day, but are worked off according to the same art." 204 

In his romance of Atlantis, Plato makes the Egyptian priest say 
to Solon, that the Athenian commonwealth had been created first by 
Minerva, and " one thousand years later she founded ours ; and this 
government established amongst us dates, according to our sacred 
books, from eight thousand years." Referring to Henri Martin 205 for 
annihilation of this Platonic myth as an historical document, the pas- 
sage merely serves to display Plato's conception of the world's anti- 
quity. Farcy 2 " 6 follows him up with a ruinous critique of "Atlan- 
tis " as applicable to its ridiculous attribution to the population of 
America. Humboldt, 207 more good-natured, while treating Atlantis 
as mythic, seems inclined to hope the story may be true. Still, in 
no case, do Plato's theories help us to a sound chronology. 

His 1 0,000 years for man in Egypt are but the half of the " 20,000 " 
now required, — 23 centuries after Plato, by Bunsen, for the exist- 
ence of mankind upon our planet's superficies ; and thus, as I have 
long sustained, 206 we have finally got beyond all biblical or any other 
chronology. Indeed, the most rigorous curtailer of Egyptian annals, 
my erudite friend Mr. Samuel Sharpe, states the case (except that 
his date for Osirtesen seems too contracted) exactly as all hierolo- 
gists of the present day understand Egypt's position in the world's 
history : 

" For how many years, or rather thousands of years, this globe had 
already been the dwelling-place of man, and the arts of life had been 
growing under his inventive industry, is uncertain ; we can hope to 
know very little of our race and its other discoveries before the in- 
vention of letters. But in the reign of Osirtesen the carved writing, 
by means of figures of men, animals, plants, and other natural and 
artificial objects, was far from new. We are left to imagine the 
number of centuries [anterior to the Pyramids'] that must have passed 

204 "The Laws," Burges transl., op. cti., 1852, v. p. 50. 

205 ]£tudes sur le Time'e de Plalon, Paris, 1841, "Atlantide:" — Types of Mankind, pp. 594, 
718, 728. 

206 Antiguite's Mexicaines, before cited, ii. pp. 41-55. 

207 "Le recit de Platon offrirait moins de difficulty chi-onologique, 1'intervalle de 210 ans 
entre la vieillesse de Solon et celle de Platon e'tant rempli par trois generations de la descend- 
ance de Dropide"s, si, par une alteration sans doute blamable du texte, c'etait celui-ci etnon 
Solon qui racontait a Critias, le grand-pere de Pinterlocuteur, ce qu'il avait appris, par 
Solon, de la catastrophe de 1' Atlantide. * * * Platon, pour donner plus d'importance a son 
recit, aurait pu introduire tous ces faits dans un roman historique, et sa parents avcc 
Solon favorisait la probability de la fiction." (Examen Critique de Vhistoire de la Geographic, 
&c, before quoted, "Considerations," i. pp. 167-73.) 

a» Otia JEgpliaea, pp. 41-2 ; 61-8 : and Types of Mankind, 683-9. 



470 THE MONOGESTISTS AND 

since this mode of writing first came into use, when the characters 
were used for the objects only." 209 

Mr. Birch, living dispassionately in the midst of temptations, aug- 
mented hourly by the increasing copiousness of his materials, adheres, 
with admirable fortitude, to the non-recognition of any arithmetical 
system of chronology. His last and invaluable pr&cis of Egyptian 
hieroglyphs 210 contains no allusion to this " vexata qusestio ;" but we 
may look forward to a history of Egypt, reconstructed by himself 
exclusively from archselogical monuments, that, according to my 
view, will ground Xilotic history upon a more stable basis than ever- 
fluctuating ciphers. In the meanwhile, a thorough revision of the 
astronomical data contained in hieroglyphical inscriptions, — data 
that, utterly misconstrued in object as well as import, for the last half- 
century, have provoked endless disputations — has at length enabled 
M. Biot 211 to fix three lifetimes of Pharaohs by three several instances 
wherein "the festival of Sothis (Syrius, the dog-star)," is recorded 
on monuments of the XVHth and XXth dynasties. The first 
occurred about B. c. 1440, during the reign of Thotmes III; the second 
about b. c. 1300, under Ramses HI; and the third under Ramses VH, 
about b. c. 1240. 

Precious to science as are these new facts, I doubt whether the 
destruction of false hypotheses is not more so ; and the removal of 
further hallucinations about pharaonic observation of the " Sothic 
Period" is one of countless reasons for gratitude to Biot. 212 After 
reading his criticism of Grseco-Roman postulates, one recognizes how 
"It becomes easy to see that the idea of an heliacal Thoth, as if it 
had been really observed at Memphis, under conditions that would 
make it correspond, day by day, with that of Antoninus, after the 
revolution of 1461 vague years, is a pure fiction :" at the same time 
that, to imagine Menophres, which is but a Greek translation of the 
nome (province) of Memphis, to have been a King, becomes, likewise, 
"a chimera." ! 

More popular, though not less interesting, is the beautiful " Deter- 
mination of the Vernal Equinox of 1852, effected in Egypt, according 
to observations of the rising and setting of the sun in the alignement 
of the southern and northern faces of the great Pyramid of Memphis, 

a» History of Egypt, London, 2d ed., 1852 ; i. p. 13. 

210 Crystal Palace Library, London, 12mo, Bradbury and Evana, 1856. Possessing only 
the proof-sheets, kindly given to me by my friend Mr. Birch, in advance of publication, I 
cannot supply its definitive title. 

211 Memoires de V Academic des Sciences, Tome XXIV, 1853. 

212 Recherches de quelgues Dales Absolues qui peuvent se conclure des dates vagues sur les 
Monumens Egyptians, Paris, 4to, 1853; pp. 16-17. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 471 

by M. Mariette." 2 ' 3 It explains how naturally this vaunted "wisdom 
of the Egyptians" (Acts vii, 22) reduces itself to simple "rules of 
thumb," still practised daily by the unlettered Fellaheen along the 
Nile; and proves also "que les prejuges du savoir une fois etablis 
sont durs a detruire. C'est une sorte d'ignorance petrifiee." 

This aphorism of M. Biot applies with singular force to chronolo- 
gers of the old school, among whom, however, must not be ranked 
Prof. Orcurti, 214 one of the Egyptologists attached to the Museum of 
Turin, where the liberal principles of Sardinia allow free utterance 
to opinion. He likewise advocates tbe longest chronology: — "Hence 
[the ChampollionistsJ establish that Egyptian chronology must be 
studied at its direct fountains, independently of the chronological 
data of the Bible (I mean for the epoch anterior to the XVHIth 
dynasty); inasmuch as, there not being a fixed and established chro- 
nology of Hebrew annals, reason insists that we should avail our- 
selves of that liberty which the [Catholic] Church concedes to us for 
using anysoever chronological system." * * * "Beyond this period 
[the XHth dynasty which, with De Rouge, he fixes about 2900 b. c], 
we do not care to prosecute the tedious task of adding ciphers that 
are only conjectural ;" and, like myself, 215 Orcurti rejects the con- 
temporaneousness of any Egyptian dynasties ; holding that, — "all the 
ingenuity of Bunsen availed naught in causing a system to be 
accepted which is in contradiction with the historians and the monu- 
ments." 

It is partly for this reason, and partly for another to be given anon, 
that I will not weary readers with an analysis of the 2d vol. (1853) 
of Chev. Bunsen's anglicised " Egypt's Place in the World's History," 
in which the author's enormous erudition rivals his wonderful dex- 
terity in making his own ciphers harmonize with each other rather 
than with the monuments. Neither is it worth the labor to point 
out the whimsicalities of the "Monumental History of Egypt" (1854), 
by Mr. Osburn a scholar that, apart from his unquestionable skill 
in deciphering inscriptions, coupled with a good knowledge of Copt- 
ology, seems to hanker after the character of Homer's Margites, 
who knew a great many things, but all of them wrong.™ 

213 Biot, Journal des Savants, May, June, July, 1855; p. 29, &c: and Idem. "Surles 
restes de l'Aneienne Uranographie dgyptienne que l'on pourrait reHrouver aujourd'hui chez 
les Arabes qui habitent l'int€rieur de l'Egypte" — op. cit. Aug. 1855. See especially Dk 
Roug£, " Noms 6gyptiens des Planetes," — Bui. Archeol., Athen Francois, Mara-Avril, 1856. 

214 Calalogo illustrato dei Monumenti Egizii del R. Museo di Torino, Turin, 8vo, 1852 ; pp. 
47, 51, 57. 

a 5 Types of Mankind, pp. 677, 683. 

216 Bentlet's Phalaris, Dyce's ed., London, 8vo, 1836; II, p. 11; from Alcib. II of Plato, 
Op. Ill, 116, ed. 1826. 



472 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Even for the only true synchronism, yet proved, between Egyptian 
monuments and Hebrew records, viz : the conquest of Jerusalem by 
Shishak; 217 a latitude of some 15 years must be allowed, as shown 
by the following table. 218 



Ch ampollio n-Figea c, 


Letronne, 


Lenormanty 


Wilkinson, 


Bunsen, 


De Rouge, 


Banicchi, 


B. C. 971. 


980. 


981. 


978. 


982. 


973. 


989. 



There being absolutely nothing, heretofore discovered, in the hiero- 
glyphics, relative to any preceding relations between the Israelites 
and the Egyptians, we are reduced to the vague process of chronolo- 
gical parallels for conjecturing under what particular "Pharaoh" 
(king), occurred the Exodus, or Joseph's ministry, or Abraham's 
visit ; and inasmuch as neither on the Egyptian, nor on the Jewish 
side, can arithmetical precision 219 be attained beyond Solomon's age, 
or about 1000 b. c, we may now, after 34 years of incessant scrutiny 
since Champollion's "Precis," give up further illusion tbat any closer 
synchronism between Moses and the "Pharaoh" who was not drowned 
in the Red Sea, 22 " than the one very plausibly arrived at by Lepsius, 221 
and adopted by Viscount E. de Rouge, 222 will ever be wrought out. 

After showing the probability that Moses must have succeeded 
the reign of a Ramses (Exod, I, 11 — "Raamses "), and that the Exode 
probably took place while Menephthah, son of Ramses II, was on 
the throne, De Rouge now confirms an assertion made by me, ever 
since I acquired some knowledge of hieroglyphics (in Egypt, 1839- 
41), — and advanced in the face of then-preponderating hopes rather 
than testimony to the contrary, that — "we have not found, upon the 
monuments, the trace of these first relations of the Israelites with 
Egypt." They never will be found ; and this for reasons which a 
critical examination of the ages and writers of the book called "Exo- 
dus" would conclusively explain. 

" Chronology," continues De Rouge, "presents too many uncer- 
tainties, as much in Egyptian history as in the Bible, and especially 
when an endeavor is made to measure the period of the Judges, for 
one to be able, a priori and through a simple comparison of dates, 
to define under what king took place the exit from Egypt. The 
difficulty is still greater when it concerns the patriarch Joseph, 

m Gliddon, Chapters on Early Egyptian History, Archwology, ire, 1st ed., New York, 
1843; 15th ed., Philadelphia, 1854; pp. 2, 3. 

218 Orcurti, op. cit. p. 50. 

219 Types of Mankind, pp. G88, 706, 714. 

220 Wilkinson, Man. and Cast, of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1837; I. pp. 54-5. 

221 Chronologie der jEgypter, Berlin, 4to, 1st part, 1849; pp. 358-63. 

222 Consei-vator of the Imperial Museum at the Louvre — Notice Sommaire des Monument 
liyypliens du Mus6e du Louvre, Paris, 18mo, 1855; pp. 14, 15, 22-3. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 473 

because the length of the time of servitude in Egypt is itself the 
object of numerous controversies." * * * "As we have said, the 
synchronism of Moses with Ramses II [XlXth dynasty], so precious 
at the historical point of view, gives us insufficient light for chrono- 
logy ; because the duration of the time of the Judges of Israel is not 
known in a very certain manner. We shall remain within the limit 
of the probable on placing Seti I about 1500 [b. c], and the com- 
mencement of the XVIIIth dynasty toward the 18th century. But 
it would be by no means astonishing if we deceived oui'selves two 
hundred years in the estimate, so greatly are the documents vitiated 
in history or incomplete upon the monuments. 

" We have thus mounted up to the moment of the expulsion of 
the Shepherds \_Hyksos~] : here we shall not even undertake any 
further calculation. The texts do not accord as to the time which 
the occupation of Egypt by these terrible guests lasted, and the 
monuments are silent in this respect. That time was long ; several 
dynasties succeeded each other before the deliverance : this is all 
that we know about it. We are not better edified concerning the 
length of the first empire, and we possess no reasonable means of 
measuring the age of the pyramids, those witnesses of the grandeur 
of the primitive Egj'ptians. If nevertheless we recall to mind, 
that the generations which constructed them are separated from 
our vulgar era, first by the eighteen centuries of the second 
Egyptian empire, next by the very long period of the Asiatic inva- 
sion, and lastly by several numerous and powerful dyuasties that 
have bequeathed to us some monuments of their passage, the hoary 
antiquity of the pyramids, maugre inability to calculate it exactly, 
will lose nothing of its majesty in the eyes of the historian." 

From this rapid sketch of the unanimity of opinion as to the his- 
toric and prehistoric periods of human life in Egypt (oldest of histo- 
rical countries) towards which scientific men in France, Italy, Ger- 
many, and England, are now converging, the reader will appreciate 
the correctness of the view taken by me, and supported with other 
citations, in Types of Mankind. It merely shows how different minds, 
reasoning without prejudice upon the same common stock of data, 
necessarily arrive at similar conclusions. But M. de Rouge's refe- 
rence to the difficulties of adjusting the chronology of the Book of 
Judjes induces a glance at its new and likely solution proposed by 
Mr. Samuel Sharpe. 223 

The obstacles to previous settlement of the succession of Israel's 

223 Historic notes on the Books of the Old and New Testaments (supra, note 29) pp. 40-6. 



474 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Judges are familiar to possessors of Cahen, 224 De Wette, 235 Munk, 228 
Righellini, 227 or Palfrey. 223 Hitherto, as Basnage 229 remarks, owing 
to superstitions of modern European origin upon the exaggerated 
antiquity of their literature, the Jews " have been the librarians of 
God, and ours too :" nor are they only bigoted Talmudists who still 
maintain, " that he who sins against Moses may be forgiven, but he 
that contradicts the Doctors deserves death." There are plenty of 
teachers extant who, without the faith or the Hebraism of old Solo- 
mon Jarchi (Raschi), would with him declare, that — "if a Rabbi 
should teach that the left hand is the right, and the right the left, we 
are bound to believe him." 230 But, for the purpose in hand, which 
is to show how Mr. Sharpe re-arranges the discrepant Book of 
Judges, it suffices to repeat the exhortation of St. Jerome, — "Relege 
omnes et Veteris et Ebvi Testam-enti libros, et tantam annorum 
reperies dissonantiam et numerum inter Juclam et Israel, id est, inter 
regnum utr unique confusum, ut hujusce-modi hasrere quaestionibus, 
non tarn studiosi, quam otiosi hominis esse videatur:" 231 not forgets 
ting either, how the father of Catholic biblical criticism, P£re Simon 
de l'Oratoire, eschews — ■" the punctilios of chrouologists ; that contain 
more vowels than consonants, and which it would be more incom- 
modious to harmonize than the different clocks of a large city. * * 
Impossible to make an exact chronology through the Books of 
Sacred Scripture such as they are at this day." 

"Albeit," writes Munk, 232 "it is impossible to present an historical 
tableau of the epoch of the Shophetim. The Book of Judges, which 
is the only one we can consult about that epoch, is not a book of his- 
tory. Every thing in it is recounted in an unstitched manner, and 
the events succeed each other with rigorous sequence and without 
chronological order. It is a collection of detached traditions about 
the times of the Shophetim, composed probably upon ancient poems 
and upon popular legends that celebrated the glory of these heroes. 
This collection, which dates from the first ages of the monarchy, had 
for object, as it appears, to encourage the new government to com- 

wi La Bible, Traduction Nouvelle, "Schophetim," vol. vii. ; Paris, 1846. 
225 Crit. and Hist. Introduction to the Canon. Scrip, of the Old Testament, Boston, transl. 
Parker, 1843; ii. pp. 196-8. 

™ Palestine, Paris, 1845; pp. 230-1, 441. 

22 ' Examen de la Religion Chre'tienne el de la Religion Juive. Paris, 8to., 1834; iii. p. 560. 

228 Academical Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures, Boston, 8vo., 1840; ii. pp. 208-35. 

229 History and Religion of the Jews, transl. Taylor, London, fol. 1708; pp. 344, 170. 

230 Mackat, Progress of the Intellect, London, 8vo., 1850; p. 14. 

231 Episl. ad Vital. — Kichakd Simon, Hisloire Critique du Vieux Testament, Amsterdam, 
4to., 1685; i. pp. 38, 350, 204-8. 

232 Palestine, p. 231. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 475 

plete the work begun by Joshua, and to show to the people all the 
advantages of hereditary royalty. For this purpose, it sufficed to 
show, by a series of examples, what had been the disorders to which 
the Hebrews delivered themselves up, during the clays of the repub- 
lic ; what had been the evil consequences which the (loving) weak- 
ness of the Hebrews towards the Canaanites had caused, and how 
the temporary power of one alone had always preserved them from 
total ruin. One must not, therefore, think to establish with exact- 
ness the chronological order of facts and the epoch of each judge. 
Savants have given themselves, in this respect, useless trouble, and 
all their efforts have completely failed. It will suffice to say that the 
ciphers which we find in the Book of Judges, and in the first book 
of Samuel, yield us, from the death of Joshua to the commencement 
of the reign of Saiil, the sum total of 500 years ; which would make, 
since the exode from Egypt, 565 years ; whereas, the first book of 
Kings counts but 480 years from the going out of Egypt down to the 
foundation of the Temple under Solomon. According to this, one 
must suppose [with Mr. Sharpe] that several of the Shophetim 
governed simultaneously in different countries. In the incertitude 
of the dates, and in the absence of historical sources, we must con- 
tent ourselves by here giving a summary of the traditions contained 
in the Book of Judges, to afford a general tableau of the state of the 
Hebrews during that period, without pretending to establish a chro- 
nological succession." 

The great merit of Mr. Sharpe's restoration to accordance of the 
dislocated fragments contained in Judges is its simplicity ; and sim- 
plicity, so far from being an index to a primeval stage of human 
intellect, is always an expression of modern philosophical science. 

" To determine the chronology, we must have regard to the geo- 
graphy; and we shall see that the wars here mentioned do not 
always belong to the whole of the Israelites ;" that is, they often 
occurred simultaneously, and not, as generally supposed by the old 
chronologers, consecutively — different points of Palestine being 
ruled over by different judges at the same time. " The whole argu- 
ment will be made more clear by the following Chronological Table : 



476 



THE MONOGENISTS AND 



S 

O 
H 

t— I 
P 

P3 
O 

o 
«i 

a 
m 

a 

> 
p 
ix 

C5 
H 
85 
P 
O 

o 



CS 



■SP5 

3 



a. 



E - 
o ^3 



-rP 



f^P 



CD 



PC 






P 





o5 I 








c3 ; 








>» : 




o : 




■^ : 


- J3 










zn • 






* fl> 


cd : 


:- 





O 






=1 

"a 

-5 



o 



THE POL YGENI ST S. 477 

Mr. Sharpe hence infers, that " the Book of Judges ends in the 
year b. c. 1100, and begins with Joshua's death, about b. c. 1250 ; and 
the Exodus took place about b. c. 1300. In this way, from the Exodus 
to the building of the Temple, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign, 
is 289 years. If, instead of considering the periods of time in part 
contemporaneous, we had added them all together [as did the 
unknown writers of Kings'], we should have had about the 480 years 
mentioned in 1 Kings vi, 1. But the above calculation is fully 
confirmed by the genealogies," &c. 

In the topographical and coetaneous tabulation of these judges, 
few students will disagree with the learned author ; but, in a later 
portion of his valuable work, Mr. Sharpe himself indicates the 
vagueness inherent in all these Jewish attempts at restoring their 
lost chronology: 233 "The events, indeed, in the history, from the 
Exodus to Solomon's death, can hardly occupy more than three 
centuries, if we observe that the times mentioned are mostly in 
round numbers of forty years each, which we are at liberty to consider 
indefinite, and only to mean several years." 

Thus, if, on the one hand, new evidences from the monuments 
and the alluvial deposits of the Nile constrain Egyptologists to 
claim, for man's occupation of that valley, epochas so far beyond all 
historic chronology (and no other deserves the name), as to eliminate 
the subject, henceforward, from any computation of the contradic- 
tory elements contained in Hebrew, Samaritan, Greek, or Latin, 
biblical codices : on the other, the parallel advance in Scriptural 
exegesis has curtailed to rational limits the preposterous antiquity 
formerly claimed for the Israelitish nation. 

Whether Usher (in the margin of king James's version) takes, 
with Marsan, 480 years as the interval between the exode and 
Solomon's temple ; or Bossuet, 488 ; or Buret de Longchamps, 495 ; 
or Pezron, 837; has now become a matter of no consecmence. 
" Three centuries," a little more or less, is the average between Mr. 
Sharpe's estimate and that of Lepsius, at about 314-322 years. 234 To 
reach nearer than that supputation is a hopeless task, upon existing 
MSS. of the Old Testament, — each one being faulty. 

Since it has been discovered that, before Rabbi Hillel, son of Juda, 
the Jews had made no scientific attempts (whatever the Alexandrian 
Greeks may have done) to establish a "chronology" for their own 
nation, no further dependence can be placed upon Hebrew numera- 
tion. Hillel died about 310-12 ; and in such repute was his autho- 

233 Historic Notes, p. 82. Lepsius's argument to the same effect is cited in Types of Man- 
hind, pp. 706-12. 

*" Ckronologie der jfigypter, I, 335-7. 



478 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

rity held, that St. Epiphanius claims his previous conversion 235 from 
Judaism! Hillel, continues Basnage, did three things which ren- 
dered him famous among Jews and Christians. One of them was : 
"It was that he fixed the epocha from the Creation of the World, and 
reckoned the years from them. Different epochas were made use of 
before. The departure from Egypt was the sera of some ; the Law 
given at Sinai was that of others : one reckoned the years from the 
Dedication of the Temple ; another from the return out of captivity: 
some dated from Alexander the Great's entering into Jerusalem, 
which they looked upon as a considerable event to the Republick. 
But since the Gremara was finished, they began to reckon the years 
from the Creation of the world ; and we are told that it was Hillel 
who established this epocha, and transmitted it to posterity (for it is 
still observed); and, according to his calculation, Jesus Christ was 
born in the year 3760." * * * The Jews sustained, however, that 
"Jesus Christ is not the Messiah, since he came above 200 years 
before the end of the fourth millennium :" * * * on which Basnage 
comments that "Jesus Christ ought to be lorn in the year 3910" ! 

"Varise opiniones de numero annorum a creatione ad nativitatem 
Christi : et quid de fine mundi sentiendam," — is a statement illustrated 
by Gaffarelli 336 with a list of more than twenty authorities, from 
Paulus Forosemproniensis down to Malvenda, in which the dates for 
the Creation range from b. c. 3760 to 6310 ! " Ex quibus concluditur, 
nee dies neque annos a creatione ad Christum absque peculiar! reve- 
latione sciri posse." To the above, his translator obligingly adds 
five more estimates of the year of the Nativity, — between a. m. 3837 
and a. m. 3970 : marvelling, with Clemens Alexandrinus (lib. I, 
Strom. B), at the existence of persons, in his time, who (not per- 
ceiving exactly, with our acuter national Didymus, how chronology 
"binds man to God") attempt precision in determining Jesus's 
birth — "Sunt qui curiosius non solum annum sed diem addunt!" 
And this erudite father of the Church was living (a. d. 192-217) 
barely two centuries after the occurrence of this the greatest (among 
ourselves) event of events. 

Mosheim 237 honestly concedes that the year of Christ "has not 
been hitherto fixed with certainty;" but adopts, as "most probable," 
"the year of Rome 748 or 749 (Matt, iii, 2; John i, 22; &c.):" in- 

385 Basnage (supra, note 229), pp. 157-9: — conf. also Maokat, Progress of the Intellect, 
II, pp. 307-15. 

236 Curiositatce lnauditos de figuris Persarum Talismanias, Horoscopo Patriarcharum et 
Characleribus Ccelestibus; Latine-opera, M. Gregorii Michaelis; Hamburgi, 1676; cap. II, 
pp. 7, 44-8, 180-2. 337-40. 

235 Ecclesiastical History, transl. Maclaire; 1st American ed., Philadelphia, 1797; I, p. 52. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 479 

forming us, in a note, that "the learned John Albert Fabricius has 
collected all the opinions of the learned concerning the year of 
Christ's birth." To his work I turn: 238 although the question be 
not even settled at this day ! m 

Under the head of "Minutiae in chronologicis minus consectandse," 
Fabricius enlarges upon the uncertainties of chronology; backing 
assertion with citations of 141 different epochs assigned to Christ's 
nativity by about 283 authorities, who begin at A. M. 3616 and end at 
a. m. 6484, for this all-important event. Then, for those who 
"Christum natum consent" in An. Urbis cond. (the year of the 
building of Rome), they range between 720 and 756 a. u. c. If, 
more particular, we ask — "Quo mense natus Christus?" a table is 
presented to our sight in which different computators have agreed 
upon the 6th January, or the 10th idem, or February, or March, or 
the 19-20th April, or the 20th May, or June "XI Kal. Julias," or 
July, or August "sub finem mensis," or September "die XVSeptem- 
bris, Jo. Lightfootus ad Lucee II, 7," or October "sub init.," or the 
6th November, or the 18th of the same, or, lastly, the 25th December 
— "ex communi Graecse et Latinse Ecclesise traditione." 

Fabricius adds this singular coincidence — " Pulchre observarunt 
Yiri docti a Romanis die VIII Cal. Januarii sive XXV Decembris 
celebratum diem natalem Solis invicti, initium nempe periodi annuae 
et brumam: eamque solennitatem a Christianis opportune trans- 
latam ad Natalem Solis Justitise." 

RaoubRochette, 240 in his erudite inquiries into the Phoenician god 
Melkarth, as an incarnation of the Sun at the Winter Solstice — a 
subject greatly developed by Lanci 241 — has carried these Roman 
analogies back to a much earlier period in Canaan. He says — "We 
know, through a precise testimony in the ancient annals of Tyre, 
the principal festivity of Melkarth, at Tyre, was called his re-birth or 
his awakening, tyepSis (Joseph., Antiq. Jud., VIII, 5, 3) ; and that it 
was celebrated by means of a pyre, whereupon the god was supposed 
to regain, through the aid of fire, a new life (N"onnus, Dionysiaca, XL, 

236 Bibliographia Antiquaria, sive Introductio in notitiam Scriptorum, qui antiquates Mebraicas, 
Grcecas, Eomanas, et Christianas scriptis illustraverunt ; 2d ed., Hamburgh, 4to, 1716; pp. 
185-7, 193-8, 842-3, 344. 

239 See De Saulct, " Sur la date de la naissance et de la mort du Christ," — controverted 
by Alfred Maury, "Sur la date de la naissance du Christ" (Athenmum Francais, 1855, pp. 
485-6, 513-4). 

240 Me'moires <f Archeologie comparee, Asiatique, Grecque el Etrusque. I re M£m., "L'Her- 
cule Assyrien et Phoenicien consider^ dans ses rapports avec l'Hercule Grec;" Paris, 4to, 
1848 ; pp. 25-7, 28, 29-38. 

241 Paralipomeni alV Illustrazione delta Sagra Scrittura per Monumenli Fenico-Assirii ad 
Egiziani ; Paris, 1 845, 4to 2 vols, passim. 



480 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

398). The celebration of this festival, of which the institution 
mounted up to the reign of king Hiram, contemporary of Solomon, 
took place at the month Peritius; of which the second day corre- 
sponded to the 25th December of the Roman calendar (Sebv. ad JEn. 
VII, 720 — Jablonsky and Zoega) ; and, through a coincidence that 
cannot be fortuitous, this same day, viz : the 25th December, was 
likewise at Rome the dies natalis Solis invicti ; a qualification under 
which Hercules was worshipped at Tyre and elsewhere. It was, 
therefore, really the death aud the resurrection of a god-Sun, that 
was celebrated at Tyre, at the Winter solstice, through this pyre of 
Hercules ; and already we seize, in its primitive and original form, 
one of the principal traits of the legend of the Hellenic Hercules." 
* * * And this lamented scholar continues to show how Movers 
(Die Phcenicier, I, 386) proves that, in the time of Ahab (1st Kings, 
XVHI, 27), a "god deceased and resuscitated" was a fundamental 
idea in the Jewish theocracy ; as well as to point out the relations 
between this Semitic myth and that of the Phoenician god Adonis ; 
who is the Tham-uz bewept by Israelitish females, at the gate of the 
holy Temple, in the time of the Prophets (Ezehiel, VHI, 14). 

If we seek at Rabbinical sources for their various supputations 
concerning the advent of their Jewish "Messiah," the most learned 
and critical of their standard divines, Maimonides, acquaints us that 
— "the Messiah should have eome in the XHIth century, in the 
year 1316. But as that has not yet happened, others refer the end 
of their misfortunes to the year 1492, others to the year 1600, and 
others again to the year 1940 :" * * * some even holding "that the 
MeS/miaH hath been a long time born, and remains concealed at 
Rome until Elias come to crown him." 2 ' 12 

These few citations, confirmatory of my distrust, expressed in our 
last publication, 213 of any chronological systems, suffice to establish 
accuracy of fact and deduction. The toils of Sisyphus, or the 
pangs of Tantalus, seem nothing compared with those experienced 
by hundreds of chronologists who, rivalling in pertinacity the Rosi- 
crusian's search after the " elixir of life," have exhausted every expe- 
dient, our patience and their arithmetic, to discover when our world 
had a beginning. The superstition as to the possibility of success in 
any such endeavors is now fast taking rank, among men of science, 
with its extinct corollary — so miserably distressing to our Boeotian 
ancestors, about the year 1000 of our era — viz : anxious cipherings 
as to the world's termination. On this phase of humanity's cyclic 

242 Basnage, op. cit., pp. 374—5. 

243 Types of Mankind, pp, 657-62. 



THE POL YGENIST S. 481 

hallucinations, 24 " 1 it has been well observed by "W. Rathbone Greg, 245 
that " the error of Paul (1 Thess. IV, 15) about the approaching end 
of the world, was shared by all the Apostles (James, V, 8 ; 2 Peter, 
HI, 12 ; 1 John, H", 18 ; Jude, v. 18)." 

From Hebrew to Assyrian subjects the transition is natural; if but 
to observe that very trifling, as regards chronological determinations, 
has been the progress since Layard's second Expedition, published 
in 1853. 246 Col. Rawlinson's various papers in the Royal Asiatic 
Society's Journal, 247 together with his unceasing announcements of 
new discoveries, through the London "Athenaeum" especially, have 
not been yet an - anged into a "corps de doctrine:" so that, except the 
summary tables in the last edition of Mr. Vaux's learned work, 243 there 
is little settled about cuneiform annals, whether in England or on the 
Continent ; notwithstanding the enormous increase of materials, due 
to the local exhumations of Ross, Loftus, Eresnel, Oppert, Place, 
Rassam, Jones, and other laborers around Mosul and Bagdad. 
Cuneatic students (as was in part the case 15 years ago with Egyp- 
tian hieroglyphics, which possess clews that the others have not) are 
still struggling, not merely with the philology of three distinct 
tongues, Semitic, Indo-Germanic, and Scythic, encountered in arrow- 
headed inscriptions of different epochas and at different localities, 
but against the more arduous phonetic complications of the various 
groups or signs in which archaic dialects of these three idioms are 
expressed. In consequence, that which is read one way by Rawlin- 
son in England, is, generally speaking, read in another by Hincks 
in Ireland; both are oftentimes obnoxious to the conflicting versions 

244 Foebes Winslow, "On Moral and Criminal Epidemics," — Journ. of Psychol. 3Ied. 
and Mental Pathology, April, 1856 ; Art. VI, pp. 251-2. Alfeed Mauey, Les Mystiques 
exlatiques el les Stigmatises, — extrait des " Annales Medico-psychologiques," Paris, 1855 ; pp.' 
40-50. Also his review of Lelut's Demon de Socrate, in Aihenceum Francais, 1 Mars, 1856. 

245 The Creed of Christendom, London, 8vo, 1851 ; pp. 19-25, 181-3. 
2 « Types of Mankind, p. 702. 

247 Outlines of Assyrian History, 1852; — Notes on the early History of Babylonia, 1855. 

248 Nineveh and Persepolis, 4th edition, revised and enlarged — London, 12mo, 1854, pp. 
506-9. While writing, I see by the London Times (Aug. 12, 1856) that, at the meeting of 
the Brit. Assoc, for the Adv. of Science, just held at Cheltenham, Sir Henry Rawlinson is 
reported to have " shown that the impressions on the bricks found at ' Ur of the Chaldees,' 
were marked with the name of a king, which he thinks identical with the Chedorlaomer of 
Genesis, and at least 2000 years before Christ." I have no doubt that, at the rate Assyrian 
" confirmations" are going on, the contemporary history of Abraham himself would yet be 
found in cuneiform, but for a slight exegetical diffculty ; viz. : the age of the unknown 
writer of the XlVth chapter of Genesis (Types of Mankind, p. 604, note 111). [The above 
was penned last Sept. Since then I have read Col. Rawlinson's most interesting "Dis- 
course" (Athenaum, Lond. 1856, pp. 1024-5); and learn that the Assyrian empire was not 
instituted before the 13th century, e. c, — a modern date to Egyptologists. When cuneatic 
students in England are enabled, through arrow-headed typography, to rival Oppert's 
resources in " Imprhriene Imperiale" (Bui. Archeol. At/ten. Ft., Mai, 1856), palaeography 
will place more faith in their translations.] 

31 



482 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of Oppert and De Saulcy in France ; whilst, in Germany, the father 
of cuneiform decipherers, Grotefend, frequently prefers a reading of 
his own. Out of this embarrassing state of affairs, a feeling of mis- 
trust has gradually arisen, especially at Paris, the centre of archaeo- 
logical criticism ; which has found voice, at last, in the pages of 
Penan j 249 than whom, amid masters of Semitish tongues and history, 
none are better qualified to judge. 

" If one must feel grateful toward those persons who venture into 
these unknown lands, whilst exposing themselves to a thousand 
chances of error and of ill success, the greatest reserve is commanded 
in presence of contradictory results, obtained through an uncertain 
method, and sometimes presented without any demonstration. Is it 
not excusable to doubt, in such matters, when one sees the man who 
has made for himself the greatest renown in Assyrian studies, M. 
Pawlinson, sustain that the Assyrians did not distinguish proper 
names by the sound, but by the sense ; and that, in order to indicate 
the name of a king, for instance, it was permitted to employ all the 
synonymes which could approximately render the same idea ; — that 
the name of each god is often represented by monograms differing 
from each other, and arbitrarily chosen ; — that the same given cha- 
racter was read in several ways, and must be considered in turns as 
ideographic or phonetic, alphabetic or syllabic, 250 according to tbe 
needs of interpretation; — when one sees, I say, M. Rawlinson avow 
that many of his readings are given exclusively for the convenience 
of identification [as amongst one of the last beautiful "confirmations" 
— Daniel's herbivorous Nebochadnassar !] ; that it is often permitted 
to modify the forms of characters to render them more intelligible : 
— when, lastly, one sees, upon such frail hypotheses, a chronology 
and a chimerical pantheon of the ancient empire of Assyria con- 
structed ? What must we think of the inscriptions, called Medic, 
which would be written, if one must credit the same Savant, in a 
language wherein the declension would be Turkish, the general 
structure of the discourse Indo-European, the conjugation Tartar and 
Celtic, the pronoun Semitic, the vocabulary Turkish, mixed with 
Persian and with Semitic ? To this method I prefer even that of M. 
Nbrris, who, persuaded, like MM. Westergaard and De Saulcy, that 
the language of the inscriptions of the third species is Scythic or 

249 Hisloire et Systeme compare des Langues Semiiiques, Paris, 1855; pp. 64-9, 70. 

250 It is nevertheless true, that a sign does often possess these different powers, and must 
so be read, in hieroglyphics ; but in the latter form of writing (whether cuneatics possess 
such indices to the method of reading or not), the groups themselves furnish the key by 
which to know its value. Conf. Lepsius, Lcllre a Rosellini, Annali, 1837, pp. 31-47: — Bun- 
sen, Egypt's Place, 1848, I, pp. 594-600: — De Rouge, Me'moire sur le Tombeau d'Ahmes, 1851, 
p. 178:— and Birch, Crystal Palace Sand-Book, 1856, pp. 222-9, 248. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 483 

Tartaric (what I do not mean to deny), undertakes to explain them 
through Ostiak and Tcheremiss, and claims to give us, with the help 
of the inscriptions, a complete Scythic grammar. One must be pro- 
foundly wanting in the sentiment of philology, to imagine that, by 
assembling upon one's table a few dictionaries, the infinitely-delicate 
problem can be solved, if it be not insoluble, of an unknown tongue 
written in an alphabet in major portion unknown. Even were the 
language of the inscriptions perfectly determined, it could not be, 
save through an intimate knowledge of all the neighboring idioms, 
that one might arrive at giving with certainty the grammatical ex- 
planation and the interpretation of such obscure texts." 

Taking China, on our way back to Egypt from Chaldea, it is to be 
remarked that, since the labors, hitherto unimpeachable, of the 
Jesuit missionaries, 200 years ago, little or nothing has been done, 
in that impenetrable country, by European criticism of their ancient 
monuments or annals, to invalidate the sketch of Chinese chronology 
borrowed from Pauthier. 251 ISTo preconceived opinions (or desires), 
on my part, induce suppression of doubts as to the historic claims of 
this Sinologico-Jesuit account of Chinamen's antiquity to absolute 
credence. There are improbable circumstances about the re-finding 
copies of their ancient books, after the destruction of libraries by 
Chi-hoang-ti, 252 about B.C. 213, — parallel with librarian auto-da- 
fe's elsewhere — on which some more positive narration might be con- 
soling ; and Davis ^ has remarked how, in the flowery empire itself, 
"a famous commentator, named Choofootse, observes: 'It is impos- 
sible to give entire credit to the accounts of those remote ages.' 
China has, in fact, her mythology, in common with all other nations." 
She had, also, at very early times, — hundreds of years prior to the 
Grecian Thales — her astronomical observations. Among these (if 
any point seemed certain in Chinese or other histories) were two 
eclipses of the sun, recorded as having taken place in the reign of 
Tchong-kang, whom Father Amiot's table places about b. c. 2159-47. 254 
The former was computed, by Gaubil, to have occurred on the 13th 
Oct., 2155 b. c. ; and by Freret and Cassini, during b. c. 2007 : the 
latter by Rothman, resuming Chinese supputations, in the Julian 
year 2128. Now, it is unfortunate that, with the precise " Tables 
Abregees, composees par M. Largeteau pour faciliter le Calcul des 
Syzygies ecliptiques et non ecliptiques," neither this astronomer nor 

251 Types of Mankind, pp. 695-7. 

252 Pauthier, Chine, Paris, 8vo, 1837; pp. 222, 236. 

253 The Chinese, 12mo, London, I, p. 157. 

254 Pauthier, Chine d'apres les documents chinois, Paris, 8vo, 1837, p. 480: — " Histoire 
critique du Chou-king" — Livres Sacre's de V Orient, Paris, 8vo, 1843 ; pp. 3-5. 



484 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

M. Biot 255 was, down to 1843, able to find that either of two solar 
eclipses, which really occurred at that remote period, could have 
been visible in China at all ! 

As to Hindostali, the fiat of Klaproth 256 stands unshaken by any 
more recently discovered facts ; at the same time that the plurality 
of later critics, out of Germany, 857 — a country where the affinities 
of Sanscrit with Allemanic idioms had, indeed, superinduced a state 
of rapture that is beginning to melt away — corroborate the modern- 
ness of its annalists: ""We are ignorant of what was [only in the 
7th century, b. c. !], in these remote times, the state of India." * * * 
" The total want of materials has forced me to pass over in silence 
the history and the antiquities of India. The political geography 
of this vast country, even a long time after it had been inhabited by 
the Mohammedans, is still very little known to us." 

Prinsep 258 shattered the alleged antiquity of Hindostanic inscrip- 
tions ; nothing, throughout the peninsula, ascending within four or 
five generations of the modern age of Buddha, — assumed at the 
6th century b. c. 259 

And, if art (vide Pulszky's chapter, II. ante) be chosen as the crite- 
rion, the previous investigations of Langles had ruined the fabled 
age of India's structures ; " because, according to the judicious ob- 
servation of Mr. Scott Waring {Mist, of the Mahrattas, p. 54), there 
exists no authentic information anterior to the establishment of the 
Mussulmans in the peninsula (before the 14th century of the vulgar 
era) ; and it would be superfluous to seek for some historical docu- 
ments in works written in Sanscrit." * * * The pagoda of Djugger- 
naut, begun in the 9th century, " is a new proof in favor of our 
opinion upon the modernness of the monuments of the Peninsula." 
* * * Ellora, by the Brahmans estimated at 7915 years old, was by 
Muslim writers reduced to 900; and thus, says Langles, "the date 
of 600 to 700 years seems to me more probable than that of 7915." 
These rock-temples present traces of Greek architecture : their ele- 

255 Journal des Savants, Paris, 184.3 ; l r article ; tirage a, part, pp. 4-8.' 

256 Tableaux historiques de I'Asie, Paris, 4to, 1826; pp. 2, 286. 

257 De Gobineau, (Inegalile des Races, II, pp. 101-3), has allowed himself to be somewhat 
carried away as to Arian antiquity ; but his observations on old-school philologers (p. 105) 
seem to me to be correct. 

258 Journal of the Asiatic Soc. of Bengal; Calcutta, 1828; VII, pp. 156-67, 219-282:— 
and Stkes, Jour. R. Asiatic Soc, London, 1841 ; VI, Art. 14, Appendix III. 

259 Monuments anciens et modernes de V Hindoxtstan, Paris, folio, 1821 ; I, pp. 117, 131 ; 
II, 12-3, 66-8, 70, 169—70, 184, 208. Cf. also Bbiggs, Aboriginal Race of India, E. Asiat. 
Soc, June, 1852 ; pp. 7-9, 14. The Arian-Hindoos did not even conquer the Dekhan much 
before the 5th century of our era: — the modernness of Elephanta, Salsette, &c, was sus- 
pected at sight by the judicious observer Bishop Hebek (Narrative of a Journey through 
the upper Provinces of India, London, 4to, 1828; II, pp. 179, 192). 



THE POLTGENISTS. 485 

phants were cut by foreign artists; and "the leaves of Acanthus 
are badly drawn and capsized around the base of a pillar of Hindoo 
style ; so that this base gives the idea of a Corinthian capital turned 
upside-down." The Hindoo zodiacs, too, are all Greek and modern ! 

We have seen that Palestine, Mesopotamia, and essentially Hind- 
ostan, afford no stand-point for annual chronology, even to the year 
B. c. 1000 ; and that, beyond the twenty-third century prior to our 
era, at the outside, China fails to supply us with proofs of anything 
more than a long previous unhistorical existence. There are no 
other lands, except Egypt, whose historical period attains to pa- 
rallel antiquity with the two first-named countries; notwithstanding 
abundant evidence of Etrurian, Phoenician, and Lydian, civilizations 
of much earlier date than 2850 years backwards from our time. 
Pelasgic Greece falls into the latter category. Whether as nomads 
or err ants, as the ancient or the old, 2eo "the remembrance of these 
most ancient inhabitants of Greece loses itself in transmythological 
ages." Their successors on Hellenic soil have left us no determinate 
chronology beyond the Olympiads, beginning with the foot-race won 
by Coroebus in the year b. o. 776 ; 261 and these victories were not 
arranged in their present order for 500 years later, viz., by one 
Timseus of Sicily, about b. c. 264. 

" The Pelasgi and the other primitive populations of Greece," 
continues Maury, "do not appear to have possessed any ancient 
tradition upon cosmogony and the first ages of human society. 
They were, in this respect, in the same ignorance, in the same 
vagueness, wherein the savage septs of Asia, of Oceanica, and of 
the New World, are still found, who have not been brought into 
contact with more enlightened nations. One encounters nothing, in 
fact, among the primitive Hellenes, analogous to the cosmogonies of 
Genesis, of the books of Zoroaster, or the laws of Manou. Which 
sufficiently proves, that the intellectual state of these Pelasgic tribes 
was very far removed from that of the Israelitish, Persian, or Hindoo 
peoples." Like these Asiatics, the Greeks of a later day anthro- 
morphosized inventions ; or else made the proper name of a country, 
a river, or a hill, the primordial human ancestor of a nation. 262 
" Thus, in Elis, a personage whose name was taken from that of the 
Olympic games, Aethlios, passed for the first king of the country, 
and was regarded as the son of Zeus and Protogeneia. 

" So, likewise, in antiquity, the name of pretended inventors of 

260 Alfred Mauky, Recherches sur la Religion et le Culte des Populations primitives de la 
Grece, Paris, 8vo, 1855; pp. 2, 20, 30-1, 201-4, 216-24. 

261 Ajjthon, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, New York, 1843 ; pp. 678-9. 

262 Types of Mankind, pp. 549, 551-2, for parallel examples. 



486 THE MONOGEKISTS AND 

certain arts was forged through the aid of words which designated 
either the objects or the instruments of which the arts make use, or 
even by the help of the proper names of tbese arts themselves. It 
is thereby that Closter (KXwtfi^p), that is, the spindle, was held to be 
the inventor of the art of spinuing wool. The art of striking fire 
from flint was discovered, it was said, by Pyrodes (nopw^s), that is, 
the burning, the kindled, son of Oilix (silex), the flint. Tbe 'pise' 
(luteum cedificium) had been invented by Technes (Ts^v^s), art, incor- 
rectly written Doeius in the manuscripts of Pliny ; the rule (regula) 
and not the tile (tegula), as one reads in some manuscripts, had had 
for its author Cinyrus, son of Acribeias. The name of this Cinyrus 
is derived from the root canna ; and a false reading has substituted, 
for the name of Acribeias (dxpcfism, rectitude), that of Agriopas. 
Ghalcas (XaXxos, brass), son of Athamas ('Aoaf«*j, hard metal), had 
made the first bucklers, &c. ;" — just as, in king James's version, 
TrtJBuLKaIN", literally, the God- Vulcan, has become transmuted 
into "Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and 



263 Genesis iv, 22: — conf. Gliddon, Olia JEgyptiaca, p. 141, note. 

Every one knows that whether "GOD appeared in the flesh," or "who appeared in the 
flesh," of 1 Timothy iii, 16, depends upon OC or ©C in the Codex Alexandrinus at the 
British Museum; which biliteral, through pious handlings, is now effaced! (Cardinal 
Wiseman, Connection between Science and revealed Religion, London, 1836 ; II, pp. 168-9. 
See also the same fact in Wetstenii Nov. Testament., II, p. 864 ; cited in Bishop Marsh's 
Michcelis, I, p. 577, notes.) 

"The history of Saint Ursula and of the 11,000 virgins whose innumerable relics are 
shown, arranged in one of the churches, at Cologne, owes its origin to an expression of 
the old calendars. Vrsula et Undecimella, VV. MM. ; that is to say, ' Saint Ursula and Saint 
Undicimella, virgins and martyrs.' Ignorant readers have, as one perceives, singularly 
multiplied the latter saint. Conf. Brady, Clavis Calendaria, t. 2, p. 334." (Alfred Maury, 
Ligendes Pieuses du Moyen-Age, Paris, 8vo, 1843; p. 214, note.) 

Here is one Hebrew, another Greek, and a third Latin, example, out of hundreds at hand 
(in Hebrew especially), to illustrate historical metamorphoses. Where either instance does 
not suit the taste of a Boeotian, it may that of an Athenian. But for the orientalist I add 
an inedited specimen, due to the kindness of a Persian scholar, my old friend Major-General 
Bagnold, of the Hon. East-Ind. Comp.'s Service. 

In the Arabic alphabet, adopted with slight modifications by Persians, the letter zetn, 
Z, is distinguished from the letter re, B, only by a " nuqta," dot, or point, placed above 
the former letter's head. " The author of the Anwarry Saheilly jocularly criticizes the use 
of points by an amusing couplet, which I translate almost verbatim, and paraphrase: 

'If Anwarry, within this world, 
Could wish to live without its ze"himut 

(misery) V^^-^-y 
Nature brings forth a filthy fly 
To dung o'er the head of re in rehimut 



(mercy) l^^&f.' " 



THE POLYGENISTS. 487 

" In the time of Pausanias, tlie people of Corinth, to 'whom the 
circumstances of the foundation of their city were totally unknown, 
recounted that this city had been built by a king named Corinthus. 

"All these personages of poetical fiction were attached, afterwards, 
to the divers countries from which the Greeks fancied themselves to 
have originated ; deceived as they were by resemblances of traditions 
and the lying assertions of strangers emulous of being the parents 
of their civilization. It is hence that Phoenicia, Media, Egypt, Libya, 
Ethiopia, and India, were regarded as the cradle of these heroes, 
all Greeks by their origin and their name, — traditions comparatively 
modern, that have led more than one scholar astray, but of which 
criticism has definitively ruined the authenticity." 

In justice to my friend M. Maury, I ought to mention that his 
foot-notes sustain every statement with irrefragable testimony. We 
behold, however, in Greece, — a country about which we possess 
more information than concerning any other on earth, — thanks to her 
ancient historians and to modern archseologists — how human ori- 
gines, in one and the best-represented locality, are absolutely un- 
known. If in storied Hellas such is the case, what must we expect 
to find about man's primordial advent upon our planet, among less 
historical nations ? The prefatory remarks to the "American Realm" 
of our Ethnographic Tableau will illustrate another phase of this 
argument. 

The chronological deficiencies encountered everywhere else compel 
a final return to the monuments of the Nile. Amid their petroglyphs 
and papyri alone can we hope to weave a thread by which to measure 
the minimum length of time that a type of humanity must have 
occupied that valley. In our former work, 261 a synopsis of hiero- 
glyphical investigations exhibited how Egyptian chronology stood 
in the year 1853. Four years have passed, and I have nothing to 
alter. Correct then, the same views are accurate now ; for, with 
the exception of an appendix to the Misses Horner's translation 265 
of his travels, Chev. Lepsius has not more definitively treated on 
chronology; nor, up to the spring of last year (1856), had he published 
his Book of Kings ; until the appearance of which, I have consistently 
maintained since 1844, no professed system of Egyptian chronology 
can, in the very nature of human things, possess solid or durable 
claims to attention : — such as have recently appeared, worthy of respect, 
being either likeM. Brunet de Presle's, 266 a re-examination of the classi- 
cal sources ; or else like Chev. Bunsen's second volume {ubi supra), a 

°" Types of Mankind, 686-9. 

265 Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, &c. (supra, note 198). 

266 Examen critique de la Succession des dynasties egyptiennes, Part I, Paris, 8yo, 1850. 



488 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

labyrinth of arithmetical adjustments satisfactory to no one but 
their learned calculator; or again, similar to the useful but very 
piece-meal coverings of a skeleton chronology by M. Brugsch, — ^ 
who, in the main, agrees with the time-measurements previously 
laid down by Lepsius ; or finally, ingenious attempts at unsettling 
that which had been generally agreed upon, by Champollionists, 
through M. Poitevin's 268 attorney -like process of detecting some sup- 
posititious flaw in the indictment. 

For myself, therefore, as before stated, I have no more precise 
Egyptian chronology to offer than that already sketched in Types of 
Mankind; and having waited some twelve years for Lepsius, it is 
small hardship to extend one's patience for a few months longer : 
because, as I had the pleasure of hearing from his own lips last year, 
during our rencontre over the new treasures of the Louvre Museum, 
the Book of Kings must now be near the point of its appearance at 
Berlin. The delay of publication, since its announcement about 
1845, 269 is not to be regretted. The Chief of the Prussian scientific 
mission, upon his return from the East in 1846, had first to arrange 
the periodical issue of the magnificent Denkmaler, by no means yet 
completed ; and next, in such standard works as the Ohronologie der 
JEgypter, followed by innumerable minor essays, to clear away erro- 
neous hypotheses whilst indicating novel facts, before the chronologi- 
cal frame-work, resulting from accumulated discoveries, could be 
filled up in method satisfactory to archseologists. 

Through such wise procedure, his Book of Kings will now embody 
the enormous series of historical data derived (only since 1850) from 
the Memphite exhumations of M. Aug. Mariette — latterly ap- 
pointed, by Imperial discrimination, one of the Conservateurs du 
Musee du Louvre. 

"With an outline of this gentleman's conquests in Egyptian 
science, my addenda to the pages 270 of our last volume (wherein his 
name foreshadows revelations, the extent of which none but himself 
could theu appreciate) may properly close. It was my good fortune 
to arrive at Paris in Nov. 1854, within a week of M. Mariette's 
return there, fresh from the scenes of his four-year's toil beneath 
desert-ground with the superficies of which, around the Pyramids 
of Sakkara, I had been familiar from 1831 to 1841. Introduced to 
him at the Institute by our collaborator M. Alfred Maury, nothing 

267 Reisberichte aus JEgypten (supra, note 199). 

268 Memoire sur les Sept Cartouches de la Table cTAbydos attribute a la XII" dynaslie e'yypt- 
i enne — Extrait de la Revue Archeologique, ll e Annfe, Paris, 1854. 

569 Gliddon, Appendix, 1846, to all subsequent editions of "Chapters on Early Egyptian 
History," p. 3. 

2 '0 Types of Mankind, pp. 675, 686. 



THE POLTGEKISTS. 489 

could exceed the frankness and prolonged kindness of his bearing 
towards an elder Miotic resident. M. Mariette is too highminded 
for me to express more than a grateful acknowledgment of facili- 
ties by him accorded to me ; not forgetting either those of his able 
coadjutor at the Louvre, my friend M. T. Deveria. 

The first reliable announcement of results of " Excavations at the 
Serapeum of Memphis" appeared over the signature of a far-famed 
archeologue, F. de Saulcy de l'lnstitut : 271 but the treasures brought 
thence by Mariette, were not arranged for public inspection in the 
Louvre-galleries, until the 15th May, 1855, during the Exposition 
universale. The facts are these. 

Sent out to Egypt " en mission" in quest of ancient Coptic MSS., 
the curiosity of our Egyptologist was excited at Alexandria, Aug. 
1850, by the sight of numerous uniform Sphinxes of calcareous 
stone, covered with Greek inscriptions, said to have been brought 
from Sakkara, the necropolis of Memphis. Following at Cairo the 
advice of Linant-Bey, during a trip to the localities, M. Mariette 
discovered, peeping out from the sand, one of this self-same kind of 
sphinx in situ. For a man of his education and quick energy this 
indication sufficed. Gangs of workmen were immediately employed 
to clear away the sand which, since the days of Strabo — B.C. 15 — 
had accumulated over these rocky undulations to a depth varying 
from 10 to 70 feet; and, by the 25th Dec. of the same year, an 
avenue, in length above 6600 feet, was laid bare, flanked by the 
remains of a double row of sphinxes, of which 141 were in good 
preservation. 

At the end of this alley, a little further exhumation disclosed — 
astounding to relate, in an Egyptian cemetery — a hemicycle formed 
of Greek statues of Hellenic worthies; Pindar, Lycurgus, Solon, 
Euripides, Pythagoras, Plato, JEschylus, Homer, Aristotle ! Thence 
branched off a paved dromos to the right and left ; the latter path- 
way to a temple built by Pharaoh Amyrtseus (about b. c. 400) in 
honor of Apis; the former straight to the long-lost Serapeum. 
Two chapels, one Greek and the other Egyptian, intersected the 
middle of this road on its left side ; and, in this last, large as a calf 
at 8 months, was inclosed a most beautiful and perfect statue, 
carved in white calcareous stone, of the sacred bull Apis! As 
probably the one visited by Strabo, it now ranks among other price- 
less treasures of the Louvre. Infinite inscriptions, Egyptian, Greek, 
and even Phoenician, containing the proscynemata, votive offerings, 
of generations of foreign visitors to the holy shrine ; Hellenic and 
Pharaonic bronzes, effigies, and monuments of many materials and 

271 Le Constilulionnel, Paris, 9th and 10th December, 1854; Feuillelons. 



490 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

objects, in and around this sanctuary of Serapis, were the reward of 
eight months' fatigue : when, as usual in Ottoman lands, local in- 
trigues and international jealousies arrested the works for a season ; 
until the prompt interference of the French Government, with a 
grant of 30,000 francs for expenses, enabled the undaunted explorer 
to resume his active day-labors in Feb. 1852. His nocturnal re- 
searches were never abandoned however ; and his gallant defiance 
as well of falling blocks as of assassination had been crowned, on 
the night of the 12th Nov. 1851, by entrance into a subterranean 
city of death, — the vast sepulchral caves of more than 64 genera- 
tions of Apises, covering a period of above 15 centuries, were 'nightly 
trod by Gallic foot : that is to say, more than 1600 years since the 
last Gaulish legionary had stared at Apis dead, or that in Alex- 
andria, about the times of St. Mark, there had been proclaimed the 
advent of Apis living: — £wr,v sirepxwevw, "the life which comes;" 
narrate the ecclesiastical historians, Pufmus (pbiit a. d. 408), Sozo- 
men (obiit 450), and Socrates (flour. 440) ; the last of whom, ac- 
quainted with a book which, according to St. Jerome, Sophronius 
had composed concerning the destruction of the Alexandrian Sera- 
peum, about a. d. 391, relates that — "The Christians, who regard 
the cross as a sign of the salutary passion of Christ, thought this 
sign [the crux ansata, hieroglyphice ankh, j — "life eternal" — found 
in that temple of Serapis] was the one which belongs to them ; the 
gentiles said, that it was something common to Christ and to 
Serapis" 272 — i.e. " HaPI-HeSIEI (Osiris- Apis) great God who resides 
in Amenthi, the lord living forever;" as Serapis is addressed in 
hundreds of inscriptions now at Paris. 

These researches were vigorously pushed for about four years 
along the Meraphite necropolis, resulting, as will be seen presently, 
in an immense accession of antiquities, from the earliest Pharaonic 
to the latest Soman times — a period of some 4000 years. Through 
them, the age of the colossal sphinx of Geezeh has been earned back 
to the primeval rVth dynasty ; and, for chronology, a collection of 
funereal tablets (about 650 saved out of some 1200 found), now in 
the Louvre, giving the genealogies of individuals (one I saw goes 
back, fathers and sons, about 19 generations), often with the dates 
of kings' reigns, year, month and day, of every epoch, will enable 
archaeology to fill a thousand gaps in the time-measurement of old 



*> 2 Letronne, La Croix Ansee (gypiienne (Me'm. de l'Acad. des Inscrip., 2d part) — 
"tirage a part," Paris, 1846; pp. 24-26: citing textually, Rufinus II, c. 26 and 29 — 
Sozomen, Hist, eccles. VII, 15, p. 725 B — and Socrates, V, 17, p. 276, A. B. Conf. also, 
De Potter, Hisloire du Ohristianisme. 



THE POLTGENISTS. . 491 

Egypt. The last catalogue of the Louvre museum 273 enumerates but 
few of these uncounted treasures. Science must wait patiently for 
their co-ordination by their discoverer, when France publishes his 
folio Monuments. Meanwhile, as De Saulcy says — "The names of 
a dozen new Pharaohs have been found; and the 400 principal 
steles, that are now deposited in the Louvre, are like 400 pages of a 
book written 3000 years ago, which reveal to us a multitude of details, 
heretofore unknown, about the life and the religion of ancient Egypt. 
Furthermore, art itself has to put in her claims for a share in the rich 
booty of M. Mariette ; and I limit myself to citing, among other 
monuments, an admirable statue of a sitting Scribe, dating certainly 
4000 years before the Christian era, and which is a chef-d' 'oeuvre of 
the plastic art." 

This Scribe is fac-simile-ed in our frontispiece, with other contem- 
poraneous associates from the same tomb (Vth dynasty) in plates 
LT to VIII of this present volume. They are due to the complaisance 
of my friends MM. Deveria and Salzmann (author of those unsur- 
passable jrfwtograplis of Palestine), who, with the sanction of MM.De 
Rouge and Mariette, kindly brought their instruments to revivify, 
at the Louvre, the specimens first offered to the American public in 
this work. M. Pulszky's practised eye has already assigned them a 
proper place in the history of iconographic art (Chapter II, pp. 
109-116, ante). 

But Mariette must speak for himself. 274 

"I estimate," says the explorer, "that the diggings at the Sera- 
peum of Memphis have led to the discovery of about 7000 monu- 
ments. 

" But all these monuments are not relative to the same object, that 
is to say to the worship of the God adored in the Serapeum. Built 
in a necropolis more ancient than itself, the Serapeum held within 
its enclosure some old tombs which the piety of Egyptians had 
respected. Nearly all its walls were, besides, formed of stones bor- 
rowed from edifices already demolished. * * * The clearing out of 
the Serapeum has, therefore, really had for result the discovery of 
the 7000 monuments already mentioned. But the monography of 
Serapis does not count upon more than about 3000 ; — a very respect- 
able cipher, if one recollects that few questions of antiquity have 
ever reached us under the escort of a similar number of original 
documents. * * * It is not, then, a treatise upon Serapis that must 
be required from the little essay of which I am tracing the lines. If 

273 Notice Sommaire (supra, note 222). 

2 ' 4 "Renseignements sur les 64 Apis trouve's dans les souterrains du Serapeum" — Bulletin 
Archeulogique de V Athenceum Francais, Paris, May-Nov. 1855; Articles I to V. 



492 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

it be accorded to me some day to render a detailed account of the 
operations of which the Serapeum was the theatre, I will endeavor 
to show and to define the Serapis whom the classifying and interpre- 
tation of the texts fonnd in the temple of this god have revealed to 
us. It will then be seen what Serapis really was. It will be seen 
how Serapis was a god of Egyptian origin, as ancient as Apis, seeing 
that after all he is but Apis dead. It will be seen how the Serapis 
of the,. Greeks is only another amalgamated Grteco-Egyptian god ; 
and how these two divinities have lived at Memphis in two distinct 
Serapeums, in each other's presence, without ever being confounded." 

"It is known that the Serapeum is situate, not at Memphis, but 
in the burial-ground of Memphis ; and that this temple was entirely 
built for the tomb of Apis. The Serapeum is merely, therefore, 
according to the definition of Plutarch and of Saint Clemens- Alex- 
andrinus, the sepulchral monument of Apis; or rather the Serapeum 
is the temple of Apis dead, who, in consequence, must be distin- 
guished from the temple of Apis living, that Herodotus has described, 
and which Psametichus embellished with the colossi of Osiris. Apis 
had, then, properly speaking, two temples ; one which he inhabited 
under the name of Apis during his lifetime, the other wherein he 
reposed after his death under the name of Osorapis" — corrupted by 
Greeks and Romans into Serapis. 

" By way of resume, the explanations which I have just given have 
already had for result to show us : — 

1st. — That the Serapeum is but the mausoleum of Apis ; and thus 
that the principal god of the Serapeum, that is to say, Serapis, is but 
Apis dead; 

2d. — That there had been at Memphis two Serapeums; one 
founded by Amenophis HT. \_Memnon — XVIIth dynasty, 15th cen- 
tury b. c], in which the worship of the god of the ancient Pharaohs 
preserved itself intact down to the Roman emperors [3d century 
after C] : the other, inaugurated a short time after the advent of the 
Greek dynasty at Memphis, and in which the Alexandrian Serapis, 
result of a bifurcation [i. e. a separation of religious doctrine] ope- 
rated under Soter I. [about B. c. 310], was more especially adored ; 

3d. — That the clearing out of the only one of these temples that 
has been explored, has produced 7000 monuments ; among which the 
monography of Serapis can merely claim the 3000 objects that, by 
their origin, are relative to this god ; 

4th. — That these 3000 objects come almost all from the tomb of 
Apis properly so-called ; and hence that the collection of the Louvre 
possesses a funereal and Egyptian character, quite different from that 



THE POLYGENISTS. 493 

which it would seem a collection, drawn entirely out of the temple 
of Serapis, ought to assume ; 

5th. — Finally, that this tomb had been violated and sacked ; but 
that, notwithstanding, the principal divisions of the monument and 
the nature of the objects gathered from it have permitted the proxi- 
mate re-construction of the ancient state of the localities, and to 
establish, in a manner more or less certain, the existence of a mini- 
mum of 64 Apises" — that is, of the hieroglyphic records, and some 
remains, of at least 64 embalmed bulls dedicated to, and once buried 
in this sanctuary of, the god Apis. 

Mariette then proceeds to catalogue, by epoch and circumstances, 
the succession of these divine animals, in the most detailed and in- 
teresting manner; for which I must refer to the luminous papers 
themselves. Space confines my remarks to but one point bearing on 
chronology. 

Ancient writers cited by him 275 — all, however, disciples of the later 
Alexandria^schools — affirm that the lifetime of the sacred bull Apis 
was restricted to 25 years ; at the expiration of which the quadruped 
deity was put to death by theocratic law, and a canonical successor 
sought for and installed. This custom becoming assimilated to the 
periodical conjunction, every 25 years, of the solar and lunar 
motions, on the same day and at the same celestial points, had led to 
modern astronomical suggestion of a famous cycle, called "the 
period of Apis." Nevertheless, the two ideas are proved by Mariette 
to be wholly distinct ; the luni-solar cycle of 25 years being used as 
far back as Claudius Ptolemy (about a. d. 150) in his tables ; and the 
supposed application of this cycle to Apis being derived from an inci- 
dental and misapprehended remark of Plutarch, that — "multiplied 
by itself, the number 5 produces a square equal to the number of the 
Egyptian letters and to that of the years lived by Apis." 276 

Did the Pharaonic Egyptians, in limiting, according to later Gre- 
cian accounts, the life of Apis to 25 years, recognize therein the luni- 
solar cycle in vogue among astronomers of the Alexandria-school ? 
If they did, a most useful implement is at once found by which to 
fix an infinitude of points in Egyptian chronology. Alas ! The fune- 
bral tablets demonstrate that some Apises died a natural death before 
the 25 years were completed, and that others lived " 26 years," and 
"26 years and 28 days," or "25 years and 17 days." 

" Hence the argument is positive. Our Apises die at all ages ; and 

2 '5 Pliny, viii. 46: — Solincs, c. 32: — Ammianus Marcel., sxii. 14, 7: — Plutarch, Dt 

c. 56 ; &c, &o. 
z ' 6 See also the authorities in Lepsius, Tiber den Apiskreis, Leipzig, 1853: — and Chrono- 
jie der JEgypter, i. pp. 160-1. 



494 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

it is evident that if each end of a luni-solar cycle of 25 years Lad 
coincided with a death of Apis, the monuments would have already 
told us something about it. On the contrary, they prove to us that 
our Apises were subject to the common law at the will of destiny, 
without caring for the moon or its position in the sky relative to the 
sun. The period of Apis seems to me definitively buried." 

Thus, day by day, as Egyptology advances, we discover that many 
of the scientific, theological, and philosophical notions, in most works 
of modern scholars (as yet unaware that hieroglyphics are translated) 
attributed to the simple and practical denizens of the Nile, are the 
posterior creations of Grseco-Judaico-Roman intellects at Alexandria 
— more than a millennium after the whole economy of the Egyptian 
mind had reached its maximum of development. 

Definite cyclic chronology — they had none ! Their long papyric 
registries of reigns [Turin papyrus, for instance), their unnumbered 
petroglyphs recording dates, are marked with the civil year (of 365 
days), month, and day, of each monarch's reign ; but without refe- 
rence to any historical era, or to any astronomical cycle. " Sothic 
periods," — "Apis-periods," and all other periods, are but the for- 
mulas through which Ptolemaic Alexandrians tried, after Manetho 
(b. c. 260) — what we are still attempting, 2000 years later — to syste- 
matize for Grecian readers the chronology of a primitive, unsophisti- 
cated, people who, content with the annual registry of events by the 
reigns of their kings — as here we might date in a given year of such 
a President, or in England they do in such a year of Victoria — were 
satisfied with this world as they found it created, never troubling 
their brains about the date of its creation. 

Religious dogmas — they had many ; but the Funereal Ritual™ or 
Booh of the Bead, now that we know its fanciful and almost childish 
contents, is more interesting to the Free-mason 273 than to any other 
reader, — except as phases of the human mind, and also for its ines- 
timable value to the philologist. There is naught in it about cos- 
mogony ; nor, have we any genuine Egyptian tradition of their origin 
earlier than what little was learned by Herodotus in the 5th century 
b. c. — viz: that Egyptians reported themselves to be autochthones.™ 
Diodorus's and all other notions on the subject are merely echoes of 
the foreign Alexandria-school. 

2 ' 7 Bruosch, Sa'i an Sinsin, sive Liber metempsychosis veterum Egyptiorum a duabus papyris 
funeribus hieraticis, Berolini, 4to, 1851 ; pp. 1-2. 

2W Lepsius, Todtenbuch du ^Egypler, Leipzig, 4to, 1842 : — In speaking of acquaintance 
with the doctrines of the Ritual, I would especially thank Mr. Birch for his generosity in 
furnishing me, long ago, with an autograph synopsis of each chapter and with translations 
of its more interesting columns. 

sw Herod. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 495 

Philosophy — the very word is Greek!™ 

It might, therefore, be wise for future writers, if they do not choose 
to avail themselves of the correct information accessible only in 
works of the living Champollionists, when writing about the world's 
history, to give Egypt no place in it ; lest, by relying too much on 
the absurd anachronisms of Alexandrine Greeks, they should expose 
the ignorance of two parties. 

Meanwhile, Egyptian chronology is being rebuilt stone by stone, 
inscription by inscription, epoch by epoch. Already the structure, 
in the hands of Lepsius, rears its head with Menes at 3983 years 
before our vulgar era ; and if a skeptic should desire to behold the 
constructive process in its perfection, I would refer him to Mariette's 
restoration of the XXJLLd, or Bubastite dynasty™ — b. c. 10th and 9th 
centuries — for the nee plus ultra of archaeological science in our time. 

Having now laid before the reader a sufficient epitome of facts 
and recent authorities to support those presented in our former work, 
I am free to state that, in common with my contemporaries, I recog- 
nize no chronology whatever anterior to the Old Empire, or the pyra- 
midal period of Egypt ; neither can I find solid grounds for annual 
computation anywhere prior to about 2850 years backwards from this 
year — the LXXXth of the Independence of these United States; 
nor, for centennary, in the oldest civilized country, — the lower valley 
of the Nile — for times anterior to the XVTIth dynasty, assumed at 
about the 16th-18th centuries B. c. 

Under this view, to which archseologists with other scientific men 
are fast approaching, we have "ample room and verge enough," for 
carrying-human antiquity upon earth to any extent that geology and 
natural history combine to permit. The former science, at present, 
restricts the possibility to the alluvials and the diluvial drift; the 
latter, perhaps, warrants our taking a little more " elbow room." 
Either boundary will suffice for the continuation of our inquiries into 
tumular remains of primordial humanity, and their relations to the 
ascending series of man's precursors, the fossil and humatile simise. 

280 "Pythagoras was the first man who invented that word" *IAOSO<t>OS, philosopher ; 
Bentley, Phalaris, Dyce's ed., London, 8to, 1836; I, p. 271. 

281 Bulletin Archeologique (supra, note 274) — "tirage a part," Nov. 1855; pp. 5-14, and 
Tableau genealogique. 

[A recent obliging letter from Paris informs me that " M. Mariette a fait paraitre une 
dissertation sur la mere d'Apis, dans laquelle il e'tablit que les Egyptiens avaient sur la 
mere d'Apis des idees fort analogues a. celles que les Catholiques ont sur la Vierge Marie, 
et oil il retrouve notamment le dogme de rimmaeulee conception." This I have not yet 
received. When I do, it will be interesting to compare it with the masterly Sermon preche 
dans le Temple de VOratoire, le 12 Novembre, 1854 (Paris), on "Un Dogme Nouveau con- 
cernant la Vierge Marie," by Athanase Coqtierel.] 



496 THE MONOGENISTS AND 



PART III. 



Have fossil human bones been found ? The chapter entitled 
" Geology and Palaeontology in connection with human Origins," 
contributed by Dr. Usher to our preceding work, answers affirma- 
tively; and well-informed critics 282 have conceded that his argument 
is sufficiently powerful to arrest unhesitating acceptance of Cuvier's 
denial, now more than a quarter of a century old. The subsequent 
discovery of fossil simise, equally unforeseen by the great naturalist, 
in Europe, Asia, and America, has put a new face on the matter : 
"In fact," wrote Morton in 1851, 283 "I consider geology to have 
already decided tbis question in the affirmative." So does Prof. 
Agassiz. 284 

Now, either fossil remains of man have been discovered, or they 
have not. 

Archaeology no longer permitting us to trammel human antiquity 
by any chronological limits, — having, to speak outright, before my 
eyes neither fear of an imaginary date of " creation," nor of a hypo- 
thetical "deluge" — I approach this inquiry with indifference as to 
the result, so long as errors may be exploded, or truth elicited: and, to 
begin, it strikes me that here again, as above argued in regard to 
" species," much ink might have been spared by previously settling 
the signification of the term "fossil." I know 285 the alleged criteria 
by which really fossilized bones are determined ; and have inspected, 
often, palasontological collections of all epochas in Paris, London, 
and at our Philadelpbian Academy of Natural Sciences. On every 
side I read and hear doubts expressed as to whether fossil man exists; 
yet, when opening standard geological works, 286 I encounter, re- 
peatedly, "fossil human skeleton" in the same breath with "fossil 
monkeys;" and then ascertain elsewhere (ubi supra) that the latter 

282 Paul be Remusat, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Oct. 1854, p. 205: — D'Eiohthal, Bulletin 
de la Societe de Geographie, Annie 1855, Jan. and Feb., p. 59 : — Maury, Athenaeum Frangais, 
12 Aout, 1854; p. 741 ; Riqollot, Me'moire sur des Instruments en Silex, &c, Amiens, 8to, 
1854; pp. 19, 20. 

283 Types of Mankind, p. 326 — "Morton's ined. MSS.": — Hamilton Smith, Nat. Hist, 
of the human Species, pp. 99-102. 

28* Op. cit., p. 352. "5 Op. cit., p. 346. 

286 Mantell, Petrifactions and their Teachings, British Museum, London, 12mo, 1851 ; pp. 
464, 483 ;— Ibid., Wonders of Geology, London, 12mo, 6th ed., 1848; I, pp. 86-90, 258-9;— 
Ibid., Medals of Creation, London, 12mo, 1844; pp. 861-3: — Martin, Natural History of 
Mammiferous Animals, Man and Monkeys, London, 8vo, 1841 ; pp. 332-6, 354-7. Sir 
Charles Ltell (Principles of Geology, London, 8th ed., 1850; pp. 142, 734), however, makes 
clear distinctions between " Guadaloupe skeletons" and "fossil monkeys." 



THE POL YGENISTS. 497 

are found in Europe back to the tertiary deposits, — one feels inclined 
to ask, how a single adjective comes to designate two osseous states 
denied to "be identical? "II n'y plus que les Anglais, ou l'ecole de 
Londres," says Boue, 287 " qui s'ecartent souvent du langage clas- 
sique. Comme on juge l'education d'un individu par son parler, de 
meme on peut etre tente de prendre le style du geologue comme 
thermometre de son savoir." 

It is, indeed, through popular currency of a word which, used 
exoterically when talking with theologers, implies that man is recent, 
in the biblical sense ; or, when esoterically employed among scientific 
men, means that man is very ancient in ethnological, alluvial, botani- 
cal, and other senses, — that the real question of human antiquity upon 
earth has been obfuscated. 

Thus, every one knows that the presence of " animal matter, and 
all their phosphate of lime" (Lyell) in the Guadaloupe skeletons at 
the British Museum, no less than in the G-alerie a" Anthropologic of the 
Museum at Paris, combine with other data to invalidate their anti- 
quity ; but, on the other hand, the presence of animal matter — even 
to "the marrow itself — sometimes preserved in the state of a fatty 
substance, burning with a light flame" 238 — does not the more bring 
the Irish fossil elk (Elaphus hibernicus) within the limits of chrono- 
logy, nor make the human body, bones, and implements, fouud with 
this extinct quadruped, the less ancient. 

As a contemporary 289 with mastodons, mammoths, and carnivora 
of the caves and ossuaries in the ascending scale of time, and with 
man in the descending, this Irish fossil stag links the elder and the 
old stages of the mammiferous series, amid which mankind possess 
a place, uncertain as to epoch, but certain as to fact. 290 

JSTor is this fossil Hibernian stag (or elk, which, Hamilton Smith 
says, lived as late as the 8th century), the only instance of the extinc- 
tion of " genera " and " species " since man has occupied our chiliad- 
times-transforming planet. I refer not to Elephas primigenius, or to 
rhinoceros tichorinus ; neither to ursus or canis speleeus, nor to bos pris- 
cus, equus, and many other genera 291 among which human remains 
occur : if their coetaneousness is recognized by some, it is contested 
by others ; so here the cases may be left open : but such examples as 

567 Voyage Geolog., I, p. 419: — Ainsworth, Researches in Assyria, &c, London, 8vo, 1838; 
p. 12. 

288 Op. cit. : — Mantei.l's Address to the Archaeological Institute at Oxford, 1850. 

289 Alfred Matjry, Des Ossemens Humains el des Ouvrages de main d'Hommes enfouis dans 
les roches et les couches de la lerre, pour servir & eclairer les rapports de V Archiologie el la Geo- 
logic, Paris, 8vo, 1852; pp. 34-40. 

290 See what Dr. Meigs has quoted from a late paper by Mr. Denny (supra, p. 289). 

291 Hamilton Smith, op. cit., pp. 95-6. 

32 



498 THE MOKOGEKISTS AND 

by the most rigorous opponents of man's antiquity — Elie de Beau- 
mont, Buckland, Brogniart, Lyell, Owen, and other illustrious palae- 
ontologists — are accepted. Since Roman days, bos longifrovs no 
longer roams the British isles ; even if bos aurochs may yet have 
escaped the yager's bullet in Lithuanian thickets. Man and the 
moa (dinornis giganteus) were formerly at war in New Zealand : the 
dodo vanished, during the 16th century, from Tristan d'Acunha ; 
leaving but a skull and a foot (if memory serves) to authenticate its 
portrait in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. So too has tl e 
dronte expired at the Mauritius. Of the cpinornis we know not 
whether living natives of Madagascar — that unaccountable island to 
which, Commersan (Bougainville's naturalist) happily says, "Nature 
seems to have withdrawn, as to a sanctuary, therein to work upon 
other models than those which she had mastered elsewhere" — still 
feast on its colossal eggs. And, taking again our oldest historical 
country, and the one with which I happen to be somewhat ac- 
quainted, where, in Egypt, is now the ibis religiosa, 202 of yore as common 
as Guinea-hens with us ? Who but an unconquerable botanist, amid 
the fens of Meuzaleh, could point out the cyperus papyrus ; or any 
where along the Lower Nile discover an indigenous faba JEgypti- 
aca ? Yet the former was once the main instrument of Pharaonic 
civilization ; being with the latter, the "primitive nutriment of man," 
and symbolizing "the first origin of things." 293 Six hundred years 
have passed since Abd-el-Lateef deplored the extinction of the little 
clump of sacred perseas languishing then at Shoobra-shabieh. Where, 
before his day, there had been thousands, now curiosity doubts over 
but one sample — in my time, withering in the garden of the Greek 
patriarch at Cairo. Emblem of Thoth, minister of Osiris, guardian 
of the plummet in the mystical scales of Amenthi, the cynocephalus 
hamadryas, if still an unruly denizen of Abyssinia, Arabia, and Per- 
sia, no more steals in Egypt the sycamore fig : ^ hippopotami have fled 
up to Dongola ; and wary crocodiles are not shot at lower down than 
the tomb of Moorad-bey, last of the brave, at Girge. Like the wolf 
in England, or his dog in Erin, one genus is extinct ; the other all but 
so : or else, as within the territories of our vast Republic — compared 
to which 295 "the domains of the House of Hapsburg are but a patch 
on the earth's surface" — the native rattlesnake flees before the im- 
ported hog, the bison disappears before the face of starving Indians ; 

292 During 15 years of a sportsman's life in Egypt, 1 never saw one alive. My old friend 
Mr. Harris has latterly been more fortunate. Cf. Proceedings of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences, 
Philadelphia, 1850. 

293 Herodotus, ii. 92 : — Hobus Apollo, i. 30 : — Gliddon, Otia JEgyptiaca, p. 59. 

294 Rosellini, Monumenii, for the plates. ■ ffl5 Webster to Hulzeman, 1851. 



THE POLT6ENISTS. 499 

and these last relies of succumbing savagism are melting away 
before whiskey, Bowie-knives, and Colt-revolvers; so parallely, in 
many branches — botanical, zoological, and human — -of Natural His- 
tory, the Author of Nature, within historical recollection, has ever 
vindicated her eternal and relentless law of "formation, generation, 
dissolution." 296 

The tableau of osseous and industrial vestiges of bimanes met with 
over the world, supplied by Marcel de Serres, 279 brings down fossil 
discovery to some twenty years ago. Much of what has been done 
since, particularly in America, is summed up by our collaborator 
Usher. My comments, therefore, may be restricted, after indicating 
fresher materials, to these and some few amongst the elder facts. 
Nomenclature, as above shown, being passably vague, it may be 
well to come to an understanding with the reader upon the senses 
of some words in our terminology; taking M. de Serres for our 
guide. 298 

" These (geological) formations having, then, been wrought by 
phenomena of an order totally different from the tertiary, one must 
necessarily designate, under a particular name, those organic remains 
found in them. At first, it had been proposed to give to these debris 
the name of sub-fossils, so as thereby to indicate their newness, rela- 
tively to the true fossils. Preferable it has, notwithstanding, seemed 
to us, to designate them under the term of humatiles z 299 a denomi- 
nation derived from the Latin word humatus, of which the meaning 
is nearly the same as that of fossilis ; with this difference, that the 
former expresses the idea of a body buried in an accidental rather 
than in a natural manner." 

It must be allowed that the last sentence somewhat establishes 
" a distinction without a difference;" but I presume M. Serres to 



296 R. Payne Knight, Inquiry into the Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, 
London, 8vo , 1818; pp. 25, 107, 112, 180-1, 190, &c. : — but especially in. his Account of the 
Remains of the Worship of Priapus, lately existing at lsermia, Naples; in "two Letters to Sir 
Jos. Bankes and Sir Wm. Hamilton, London, 4to., 1786 ; pp. 107-22. 

297 Essai sur Us Cavernes (supra, note 132), pp. 194-7. 

298 Op. cit., p. 216: — see tables illustrative of the chemical composition of humatile and 
of fossil bones, p. 93. 

299 Ogilvie, Imperial Dictionary, English, technological and scientific, Glasgow, 4to, 1853 ; 
I., pp. 944-6: — (Humus, soil) "Humus, a term synonymous with mould" — "Humate: a 
compound formed by the union of humus with a salifiable basis. The humus of soils is 
considered to unite chiefly with ammonia, forming a humate of that substance." — p. 790, 
(Fossil, fossilis, from fodio, fossus, to dig,) "more commonly the petrified forms of plants 
and animals, which occur in the strata that compose the surface of our globe" — II., p. 286, 
"Organic remains." I have not met, however, with the form "humatile" in works written 
in our language. 



500 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

understand, by accidental, disturbances of a more recent and local 
character, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, ruptures of mountain 
barriers, terrestrial subsidences, inundations of rivers, &c. ; and by 
natural, those earlier commotions, cataclysms, and disruptions, 
known in geological history. Klee 300 remarks — "One would con- 
ceive a false idea of fossils, if it were thought that, they were 
always remains of organic bodies, of petrified animals or vege- 
tables. A fossil is oftenest nothing more than the mineral filling the 
space originally occupied by an organic body, vegetable or mineral, of 
which the hard parts have been successively penetrated and replaced by 
mineral substances. Sometimes this substitution is made with such 
precision, that these last have altogether taken the structure and 
form of the parts annihilated ; which has given to the mineral a 
striking resemblance to the organic body destroyed." 

In the following observations, however, by the term "fossil" are 
meant only such bones as those truly fossilized ; ex. gr., those of the 
megalosaurus, palceotherium, megalonyx, iguanodon, &c, &c. By " bu- 
raatile," we understand bones which, not having been subjected to 
those conditions that incommensurable periods of geological time 
have alone supplied, are necessarily more recent — containing more 
or less animal matter, phosphate of lime, and so forth; according to 
their own relative ages, various ingredients, and several gradations 
of condition. With "petrifactions," of course we have nothing to 
do ; because they are of all epochs — fossil as well as humatile — and 
can be made in stalactite caves, such as those of Derbyshire or of 
Kentucky ; or manufactured by chemical procedures at any moment ; 
not to speak of the lost art of the Florentine, Segato. 301 

With this definition, let the query be repeated — Are human fossil 
remains extant? 

I have not yet seen Prof. Agassiz's Floridian "jaws and portions 
of a foot;" but, so far as literary or oral instruction extends, I can 
find but one human fossil. Our Philadelphia Academy of Natural 
Sciences is its possessor, viz., Dr. Dickeson's "trouvaille" of the 
fragment of a pelvis at Natchez. Dr. Usher 302 pleads for its authen- 
ticity as a fossil ; which condition neither human art, nor any process 
short of Nature's geological periods, can, 'tis said, fabricate. Sir 
Charles Lyell, acknowledging the bone itself to be a fossil, suggests 
that this same os innominatum may have fallen down, from a recent 

300 Le Deluge, Considerations geologiques el hisioriques sur les derniers cataclysms du Globe, 
Paris, 18mo., 1847. 

301 Harlan's translation of Gannal's History of Embalming, Philadelphia, 8vo., 1840; 
p. 255. 

s» 2 Types of Mankind, pp. 344, 349. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 501 

Indian grave-yard, among anterior fossilized relics of extinct genera 
discovered with it, — some of which, together with the human fossil, 
may at any time be beheld in the first case of vertebrated remains 
in the lower room of the museum of our Academy. " Componere 
lites," iu matters of science, or for the increase of knowledge, wherein 
agitation really becomes the life and soul of progress, is a thing repug- 
nant to my instincts. It remains (constat), therefore, that there is 
but one human fossil bone in the world ; and that the causes of its 
fossilification, not its fossilized state, are disputed. 

This, thus far unique, instance eliminated from the argument — all 
human remains hitherto discovered in alluvials, caverns, or osseous 
strata, are humatilb ; and so are Lund's callithrix primmvus and 
protopithecus, with other past simiadse found in South America, of 
which the genus is not merely identical with the simise platyrhinse 
belonging to this continent, and wholly wanting elsewhere, but, 
what is extremely noteworthy, their "species" is very nearly the 
same 303 as that of each of their succedaneums skipping about Bra- 
zilian forests at the present hour. There is a solidarity, a homo- 
geneity here, of circumstances between monkeys and man, not to 
be contemptuously overlooked. 

Thus much established, is it, I would ask, through mere fortui- 
tous accident that the Guadaloupe human skeletons, equally huma- 
tile with Lund's American simice, should, by Mantell, 304 be assimi- 
lated to the Peruvian, or Carib, indigenous races of America, seeing 
that they present " similar craniological development ?" or that 
Moultrie, 305 finds in the skull of one of them, brought by M. L'He- 
minier to Charleston, S. C, " all the characteristics which mark 
the American race in general?" Must we attribute, as Bunsen has 
it, to "the devil, or his pulchinello, accident," 306 a coincidence, that, 
in the same deposits with humatile American simise, Lund should 
discover skulls of humatile American man; 307 "differing in nothing 
from the acknowledged type ?" Or, finally, is mere chance the 
cause that, on this continent, by naturalists now recognized to be 
the oldest in age, if among the newest in name, there should be 

303 i i Referable to four modifications of the existing types of quadrumana" — says 
Mantell ( Wonders of Geology, ubi supra, I, pp. 258-9). 
*» Op. cit., I, pp. 86-90. 

305 Morton, Physical type of the American Indians. 

306 Philosophy of Universal History, (supra, note 16) I, p. 4. 

307 Morton, (Types of Mankind, pp. 293, 350), Proceedings Acad. Nat. Soc, 1844: — 
Lund himself (Leltre A M.Rafn, 28 Mars, 1844 — apud Klee, Le Deluge, p. 328) says — 
"La race d'hommes qui a vecu dans cette partie du monde, dans son antiquity la plus 
re'cule'e, e"tait, quant a son type general, la meme qui l'habitait au temps de sa d<icouverU> 
par les Europeans." 



502 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

found, in addition to Mantell's and Moultrie's humatile Caribs or 
Peruvians, as well as to Lund's humatile Brazilian crania, 1st — 
Meigs's humatile South- American human hones; 308 2d — Agassiz's 
Floridian " fossil remains" of human jaws and foot, embedded in a 
conglomerate at least "10,000 years" old; 309 and 3d — Dickeson's fossil 
fragment of a human pelvis ; unique, as such, in the world ? 

It is true that, except in the above chronological estimate of Prof. 
Agassiz (which falls very far below the geological realities of coral- 
formed Florida), the antiquity of these specimens eludes measure- 
ment; but, the continent of America is older than that of Europe, 
where Chev. Bunsen (ubi supra) insists upon more than 20,000 years 
since the advent of a single human pair upon earth. It is, likewise, 
infinitely more ancient than the Nilotic -alluvials of Egypt ; where, 
as before shown, our monuments go back, at the lowest figures (IUd 
dynasty), some 53 centuries ; without yielding any chronological 
boundary to anterior human occupancy. Hence, upon these pre- 
mises, there exists no arithmetical limit to human existence in 
America ; while it is a remarkable feature among the circumstances, 
that, here, humatile men and humatile simise occupy the same 
ooetaneous "platform" — the former always Indians, the latter ever 
platyrhinw ; both being, as to their "province of creation," Ameri- 
cans, and American only — neither types having yet turned up else- 
where. And, in this comparison of simple facts, nothing has' been 
said about the possible antiquity of the "mounds of the West; 31 " 
nor in respect to those antique monuments, concerning which the- 
same qualified explorer is clearing away mystifications, in Central 
America. Being modern, in comparison with palsBontological sub- 
jects, the latter may be touched upon in a subsequent place. 

Such, in brief, is the antiquarian state of matters on the cis- At- 
lantic side. As successor in various geological phenomena, Europe 
beckons for some trans- Atlantic inquiries. 

Pictet, 311 after giviug a succinct account of researches upon fossil- 
ized human bones, concludes : 

"1st. Man did not establish himself in Europe at the commence- 
ment of the diluvian epoch, &c. * * * 

" 2d. Some migrations probably took place during the course of 
this diluvian period. The first men who penetrated into Europe per- 

308 Now in the Acad. Nat. Soc. — Cf. Meigs, Account of some human bones, &c. — Trans. 
Amer. Philos. Soc, Philadelphia, 1830; III, pp. 286-91. 

309 Types of Mankind, p. 352. 

310 Sqdieb, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley ; 1848, 4to, pp. 304—306 : Types 

of Mankind, pp. 287-8. 

311 Traite de PaUontologie, Paris, 8yo, 2d edition, 1853 ; pp. 145-54, 154. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 503 

baps still saw the cavern-bears, tbe elepbants, and tbe contempora- 
neous (animal) population. Some among tbem were victims of tbe 
same inundations." 

Ten years of reflection upon newer evidences bad led this judi- 
cious palaeontologist to consider the coetaneousness of mankind, in 
Europe, with some extinct genera of mammifers (ursus spelseus, &c), 
less improbable than when he first published in 1844. 

" Nevertheless," with Maury, 312 " let us not hasten to conclude. 
The study of ethnology tends to make us think that, at first, the 
human race was very sparsely sown upon the globe. Its numerical 
strength has not ceased to increase from the most ancient historical 
times ; whilst, for many animal races, the progression has been in- 
verse. At the time when civilization was yet unborn, when, con- 
strained to live by the chase and by fishing, man wandered as does 
still the North American Indian, or the indigenous native of Aus- 
tralia, a thousand destructive causes tended towards his destruction, 
and tbe difficulty of subsisting rendered increase of population very 
slow. [The great development of population begins but with the 
domestication of herbivorous animals 313 and the culture of cereals.] 
If the first infancy of humanity, which was of very many thousands 
of years, corresponds to the tertiary period, there can then have ex- 
isted but a very restricted number of tribes, spread over perhaps those 
parts of Asia which the geologist has not sufficiently explored. * * * 
Let us here remember that geologists comprise, under the name of 
tertiary, all tbe layers (couches) which have been deposited since the 
last secondary formation, that of the chalk. The tertiary systems 
serve, in consequence, as points of junction between tbe present 
animal kingdom and the animal kingdom past. For, the most 
ancient eocene deposits contain remains but of a little number of 
secondary species, and these species comprise a great number of 
genera still existing, associated with particular types." 

In confirmation of which we may refer to M. de Serres's remark, 314 
that our domestic animals scarcely exist at all in tertiary deposits, 
although they abound in the later cave and diluvial ; whereiu, being 
found with human remains, it seems probable that man bad already 
reduced some of them to domesticity. So, again, in the caverns of 
Gard, there are two distinct epochs of humatile man ; first, the lower 

812 Op. cil. (supra, note 289), pp. 42, 40: — Leonhard (apud Klee, Deluge, pp. 323-6), 
sustains the coetaneousness of man with extinct genera of animals in European caverns, 
■with several examples. 

313 See also my remarks on the evidences of early domestication of Egyptian animals, in 
Types of Mankind, pp. 413-14. 

»« Op. cit. (supra, note 132), pp. 61-2, 149. 



504 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

stratum, when, he appears to have been a comrade of the extinct 
ursus spelseus ; and, subsequently, the upper, when he was contempo- 
rary with present living genera. 

We come now to fresh corroborations of Boucher de Perthes's dis- 
coveries of human industrial remains in French diluvial drift, cited 
by Usher. 315 They were considered sufficiently important by the 
Academie des Sciences to warrant Dr. Rigollot' s nomination as corres- 
pondent of the Institute. Unhappily, this took place on the 4th of 
January, 1855, the day of his demise : but his work survives. 316 In 
company with M. Buteux, Member of the French Geological Society, 
and M. E. Hebert, Professor of Geology at the superior normal 
school of Paris, Dr. Rigollot explored the new excavations at St. 
Acheul and St. Roch;- — the former contributing a "Note sur les ter- 
rains au sud d' Amiens," wherein he says — "The banks of silex and 
of soil which cover them [these remains] are considered as diluvian 
by nearly all geologists; but, according to eminent savans, the authors 
of the geological map of France, they form part of medium or upper 
tertiary lands." 317 

"Thus it is well established," adds Rigollot, 318 " and I repeat it, 
the objects which we are going to describe, are found neither in the 
argilo-sandy mud (Union), or brick-earth that forms the upper 
stratum ; nor in the intermediary beds of clay more or less pure, of 
sands and small pebbles, of which a precise notion may be had from 
the detailed sections joined to this memoir; but they are met with, 
exclusively, in the true diluvium; that is to say, in the deposit which 
contains the remains of animal species of the epoch that immedi- 
ately preceded the cataclysm through which they were destroyed. 
There cannot be the slightest doubt in this respect." These organic 
remains consist of succinea amphibia, helix rotundata, elephas primige- 
nius, rhinoceros tichorinus, cervus somonensis, bos priscus, equus (smaller 
than the common horse), catillus Cuvieri, and cardium hippopeum. 
Among these, some 400 industrial relics were found, during six 
months — in majority of silex, wrought in the same style with singu- 
lar skill — some apparently hatchets, others poniards, knives, trian- 
gular cones ; besides little perforated globes, seemingly beads for 
necklaces and bracelets, generally of calcareous stone, rarely of flint. 
Finally, these vestiges of primordial humanity were unaccompanied 
by any remains of pottery, or other manufactures of Gaulish later 
times and art. 

315 Types of Mankind, pp. 353-72. 

316 Rigollot, Memoire sur des Instruments en Silex trouves a St. Acheul, pris (P Amiens, et 
conside'res sous les rapports geologique et archeologique, Amiens, 8vo., 1854; with 7 plates. 

317 Op. cit., pp. 32-3. 318 Op. cit., p. 14, and passim. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 505 

Until such, well-attested facts be overthrown (how, it yet cannot 
be conceived), science must accept the existence of mankind in Eu- 
rope during ages anterior to that cataclysm which rolled reliquiae of 
their handicraft, together with bones of now-extinct genera, amidst 
the general "tohu ve bohu " of French diluvial drift. 

.Of what race were the men 319 whose manufactures were thus de- 
stroyed ? 

Certainly not Caribs, Peruvians, or Brazilians, we might answer a 
priori. The humatile vestiges of such belong exclusively to the 
American continent ; together with platyrhine simise of their com- 
mon zoological province. In the tertiary formations of Europe only 
fossil catarrhine monkeys are found ; of which, later species, now 
living, have receded into Asia and Africa. It would have been a 
violation of the usual homogeneity, well established, 320 between ex- 
tinct genera and those now alive upon each continent, were we to 
find types of humatile man incompatible, in craniological organism, 
with the existence of quadrumana in their midst. That is to say, 
monkeys in Asia and Africa now reside within the same zones (See 
Chart of Monkeys further on) as the lower indigenous races of man- 
kind,— negroes, Hottentots, Audamanes, and various inferior Hindos- 
tanic and Malayan grades : and one might reason (a priori always) 
that, in primordial Europe, as was the case in primordial America, 
and as are the analogous conditions of present Africa and Asia, fos- 
sil remains of quadrumana should, in some degree, harmonize with 
a lower type of humatile bimanes than those now living there, since 
their precursors, the monkeys, have abandoned the European conti- 
nent. 

My valued friend Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (translator of 
Lepsius's Letters from Egypt, and author of many works), to whose 
extensive range of literary knowledge I have been often indebted for 
information, read me some passages of a late German work. 321 
Among them is this remark — "In 1833, there were actually found 
in the caverns of Engis and Engihoul, near Liege (Luttich), in the 
limestone rock, even human bones and crania, which indeed belonged 
to the negro race." 

Supposing no exaggeration, or error, in this strange circumstance, 
it would be analogous to the now-altered geographical distribution 

319 Observe the language of Prof. Agassiz (svpra, " Prefatory Remarks"). 

320 Cf. the remarks of De Strzelecki (Phys. Description of N. S. Wales and Van Diemen's 
Land, 1845) on- the organic remains of New Holland, or Australia, yielding only fossils • 
of Marsupials, and other animals peculiar to that zoological province. 

321 Ethnologic, Anthropologic, und Staals-Philosophie ; Ester thiel, " Anthropognosie," Mar- 
burg. 1851 ; p. 40: — referring to Schmerling's Recherches for authority. 



506 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of negro-races and the monkey-tribes ; neither of which have inha- 
bited Europe ■ since her history dawns, but both being now-a-days 
fellow-residents, from incalculable ages, in Africa. 

That the human crania referred to must offer some singularly 
prognathous features, is evident from the following comments of 
Marcel de Serres : 322 

" The (human) heads discovered in divers localities of Germany 
(in caves, or in ancient diluvial deposits) have nothing in common 
with those of the present inhabitants of this country. Their con- 
formation is remarkable, in that it offers a considerable flattening 
of the forehead, similar to that which exists among all savages who 
have adopted the custom of compressing this part of the head. 
Thus, certain of these skulls, and for instance those found in the 
environs of Baden in Austria, presented strong analogies with those 
of African or negro races ; at the same time that those from the 
banks of the Rhine and the Danube offered some great resemblances 
with the crania of Caribs or with those of the ancient inhabitants 
of Chili and Peru." Those at Liege " approach the Ethiopian type. 
It suffices, in order to convince one's self of this, to remark the frontal 
region of their cranium, which is triangular, and not semi-circular 
as it is in the Caucasian race. Thus, according to these facts, the 
transportation of the numerous debris of animals observed in these 
subterranean cavities, must have been contemporaneous with the 
existence of this principal variety of mankind, which had not before 
been encountered anywhere at the humatile stage." 

" These events [the filling up of caverns with remains of extinct 
and living genera] are so recent, that, according to the observations 
of M. Schmerling, one meets, in the caves of Belgium, with human 
remains of the Ethiopian race, mixed and confounded with debris of 
animals whose races seem to be altogether lost. (This observation 
confirms, otherwise, that made by M. Boue, in the environs of Ba- 
den, in Austria. This naturalist there discovered, in the diluvial 
deposits, human crania which offered the greatest analogies with 
those of African or negro races). Thus, at the epoch of the filling 
up of these caverns, not only did man exist, but some great varieties 
of the human species must already have been produced. 

"Perhaps those who reject the unity of the human species may 
wish to invoke this fact in favor of their system ; because it seems to 
prove that the different races of our species remount to the very high- 
est antiquity. But, whilst admitting this conclusion to be exact, one 
must not leave out of sight that the question of the unity of the 

» 22 Op. cit., (supra, note 132) p. 223. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 507 

human genus depends, before all, upon the sense that is attached to 
the word species." 

The latest account of verifications is that of M. Victor Motschoul- 
sky, 32;) who visited Liege, where, at the University, Prof. Spring 
showed him these human pakeontological relics, described previously 
by Schmerling. They had been discovered in the caves of Gouflbn- 
taines and of Chauquiere, in the neighborhood of Liege and Angers. 

" They are composed of different pieces of the skull, of teeth and 
hands of man mingled with remains of the ursus spelseus, some 
pieces of hyena, of large felis, of stag, horse, &c. The pieces of human 
skull show that the forehead was very short and much inclined ; 
which, according to Gall's phrenology, would make one suppose an 
individual and a race such as middle Europe never had, at least since 
historical times. On this occasion, M. Spring observed to me that 
the discovery of Schmerling was not isolated ; and that subsequently, 
he himself had found many more analogous pieces in a cavern situ- 
ate between ISTamur and Dijon. This cave is called le trou Chauvau, 
and is found at 200 feet above the surface of the water of the Meuse, 
in calcareous rock. The bottom presents an enormous heap of bones 
of large ruminants, carnivora, and of man, in a limestone softened 
by infiltration. In the earth, all these objects are soft and extremely 
friable ; they are compressible and break very easily ; but exposed to 
the air they soon harden, and present a complete calcareous petrifac- 
tion. It seems that this cavern contains a great number ; and with 
minute and regular researches, one would certainly get out of it 
human crania and perfect skeletons. The samples which I saw, at 
M. Spring's, present two upper parts of a skull, jaws with teeth, and 
several bones of hands and legs. One of these skulls, according to 
the opinion of this savant, seems to have belonged to a child of seven 
years, and the other to one of twelve. The form of these crania 
approaches more that of negroes, and not at all to present European 
races. The lower jaw is squarer and broader, the inferior edge more 
rounded, and not salient as in our European races: the occipital bone 
is higher ; the lateral sides of the skull much more flattened and more 
compressed than in any of those of our living races. In the same 
palseontological formation are found a flint hatchet and a few arrow- 
heads," &c. 

The latter circumstance, but for subsequent discoveries of Boucher, 
Bigollot, and the Abbeville-geologists, might have been adduced in 
order to lessen the antiquity of these humatile remains ; but being 

323 Exlraii da Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale des Naturalises de Moscou, Tome xxiv. 1851 ; — 
Letter to the Secretary, dated "Liege, ce 16 Fevrier, 1851 ;" pp. 32-4. I owe communi- 
cation of this pamphlet to my friend Dr. John Leconte, of our Acad. Nat. Sci. Philada. 



508 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

also exhumed from the diluvial drift, rude flint instruments are no 
longer criteria for depressing the age of bones found with them. 
Primordial man was everywhere a hunter: his teeth and stomach 
are those of an omnivorous genus : his instincts still continue to be 
essentially bellicose. 

This is confirmed, whilst I am writing, by the following interest- 
ing account of proceedings among men of science in England — which 
is inserted as received : 

"A paper has also been read, in this section, by Mr. Vivian, of 
Torquay, on "the earliest traces of human remains in Kent's Cavern, 
especially flint-knives and arrow-heads, beneath the stalagmitic 
floor." The peculiar interest of this subject consisted in its being 
the link between geology and antiquities; and the certainty afforded, 
by the condition in which the remains are found, of their relative 
age, — the successive deposits being sealed up in situ by the droppings 
of carbonate of lime, which assume the form of stalagmite. The 
sources from which the statements in the paper were obtained, were 
principally the original manuscript memoir of the late Rev. J. 
M'Enery, F. G. S., which is deplored by Professor Owen, in his 
Fossil Mammalia, and by other writers, as lost to science; but which has 
been recovered by Mr. Vivian, and was produced before the section : 
also the report of the sub-committee of the Torquay Natural Society, 
and his own researches. 

"We have not space for the interesting statements contained in 
the paper, or the extracts which were read from the manuscript, 
beyond the following brief summary of Mr. Vivian's conclusions, 
which were mainly in accordance with those of Mr. M'Enery. The 
cavern is situated beneath a hill, about a mile from Torquay and 
Babbecombe, extending to a circuit of about 700 yards. It was first 
occupied by the bear (ursus spelseus) and extinct hyena, the remains 
of which, the bones of elephants, rhinoceros, deer, &c, upon which 
they preyed, were strewn upon the rocky floor. By some violent 
and transitory convulsion, a vast amount of the soil of the surround- 
ing country was injected into the cavern, carrying with it the bones, 
and burying them in its inmost recesses. Immediately upon its 
subsidence, the cavern appears to have been occupied by human 
inhabitants, whose rude flint instruments are found upon the mud 
beneath the stalagmite. A period then succeeded, during which the 
cavern was not inhabited until about half of the floor was deposited, 
when a streak containing burnt wood and the bones of the wild boar 
and badger was deposited; and again the cave was unoccupied, either 
by men or animals, — the remaining portion of the stalagmite being, 
both above and below, pure and unstained by soil or any foreign 



THE POLYGENISTS. 509 

matter. Above the floor have been found remains of Celtic, early 
British and Roman remains, together with those of more modern 
date. Among the inscriptions is one of interest as connected with 
the landing of William III. on the opposite side of the bay: 'W. 
Hodges, of Ireland, 1688.' 

" In the discussion which followed, and in which Sir Henry Eaw- 
linson, the Secretary of the Ethnological Society, and others, took 
part, the position of the flints beneath the stalagmite seemed to be 
admitted, although contrary to the generally received opinion of the 
most eminent geologists, — thus carrying back the first occupation 
of Devon to very high antiquity, but not such as to be at variance with 
Scriptural chronology : [!] the deposit of stalagmite being shown to 
have been much more rapid at those periods when the cavern was not 
inhabited, by the greater discharge of carbonic acid gas. Without 
attempting to affix with any certainty more than a relative date to 
these several points, or forming a Scriptural interpretation upon 
natural phenomena, which, as Bacon remarked, too often produces 
merely a false religion and a fantastic philosophy, Mr. Vivian sug- 
gested that there was reason for believing that the introduction of 
the mud was occasioned, not by the comparatively tranquil Mosaic 
Deluge, which spared the olive and allowed the ark to float without 
miraculous interposition, but by the greater convulsion alluded to in 
the first chapter [I presume this to be a misprint, for no Hebraist 
can find such coincidence in the Text] of Genesis, which destroyed 
the pre-existing races of animals — most of those in this cavern being 
of extinct species — and prepared the earth for man and his contem- 
poraries." 324 

There is yet another rather recent rumor of certain discoveries, 
reported by Professor Karnat, of human skulls mingled with osseous 
vestiges of the mammoth period, 325 in the Suabian Alps ; but I have 
not been able to obtain details. Nevertheless, whilst the antiquity 
of man in Europe begins to be borne out on all sides, it is to be 
regretted that these so-called negroid crania do not yet appear to 
have been scrutinized by special cranioscopists ; who would proba- 
bly detect, in their prognathous conformation, not a negro type, but 
that of some races of man of lower intellectual grade than occupy 
Europe at this day. In the scale of progression, monkeys should, 
in Europe also, have been precursors (as they were in America) of 
inferior races of mankind ; such as those we still encounter being 
confined within the same tropical zones now-a-days co-inhabited 
by the simiadce. 

324 London "Times," Aug. 12, 1858 — Brit. Assoc. Adv. Science, Cheltenham, Aug. 9. 
825 Proceedings of the German Scientific A ssocialion ;' held at Tubingen, 1854. 



510 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

It was not, however, from ratiocination upon such data, which 
are later sequences of palseontological revelations obtained only 
since 1837, that the greatest champion of the "unity of the human 
species" (at whose equivocal dictum trembling orthodoxy clutches 
like sinking mariners at their last plank) draws his conclusion that 
our first parents were of the negro type ; indeed, logically speaking, 
that "Adam and Eve" must have appertained to that same "bevy 
of black angels (caught) as they were winging their way to some 
island of purity and bliss here upon earth, and reduced from their 
heavenly state, by the most diabolical cruelties and oppressions, to 
one of degradation, misery, and servitude." 326 

In 1813, Dr. Prichard wrote: 327 "If there be any truth in the 
above remarks, it must be concluded that the process of Nature in 
the human species is the transmutation of the characteristics of the 
negro into those of the European, or the evolution of white varieties 
in black races of men. * * * This leads us to the inference that the 
primitive stock of men were negroes, which has every appearance 
of truth. * * * On the whole, there are reasons which lead us to 
adopt the conclusion that the primitive stock of men were probably 
negroes ; and I know of no argument to be set on the other side." 

With regard to Prichard's now-forgotten view, that " the process 
of Nature" is the "transmutation" of species, nothing can be less 
historically founded. To the facts established in our former work, 328 
and others in this essay, I would here add the authority of the ablest 
polygenist, no less than one among eminent comparative anato- 
mists of the Doctor's time, viz., Desmoulins : 329 " The species of the 
same genus, and with stronger reason those of different genera, are 
therefore unalterable throughout all those influences which hereto- 
fore were regarded as the ever-producing and ever-altering causes 
of them. It is, then, the permanence of type, under contrary 
influences, which constitutes the species. That which is called 
'varieties' bears only upon differences of size and color: they are 
but the accidental subdivisions of the species." Confirming it by a 
later authority, Courtet de ITsle, 330 who after citing, like Morton, 

826 Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, Philadelphia, 12mo, 1S56; p. 54. Dr. Livingstone, 
however, according to newspaper report, has since found such angelic negroes in the centre 
of Africa. "Nous verrons." 

327 Researches into the Physical History of Man, London, 8vo, 1st ed., 1813; pp. 233-9. 
This curious chapter is expunged from all later editions of his works ; nor did the learned 
Doctor ever refer, in them, to his early theory ! 

s*s Types of Mankind, pp. 56, 81, 84, 465. 

329 Jlistoire Naturelle des Races Humaines du nord-est de VEurope, de I'Asie boreale, el de 
VAfrique australe, Paris, 8vo, 1826; p. 194. 

830 Tableau Ethnographique (supra, note 1 in Chap. II), pp. 9-10, 67-76; PI. 26, 27, 31, 32. 



THEPOLTGENISTS. 511 

Hott, and myself, the testimony of Egyptian monuments to prove 
that types have not altered in 4000 years, continues : " These facts 
are, to my eyes, of the utmost importance, because they tend to fix 
the opinion of those who might he tempted to believe that races 
undergo, in the course of ages, such modifications as that the negro, 
for instance, might be derived from the white man. All inductions 
drawn from archaeology give to this opinion the most splintering 
denial. The idea of the permanence of races is justified by all 
known facts. Now, remarkable circumstance ! in order that one 
could admit the variability of types, it would require that, for three 
or four thousand years, if not a radical change in races, at least a 
tendency towards change, should have been observed; whereas the 
facts, far from demonstrating any tendency of this kind, prove, on 
the contrary, that the races of to-day are perfectly identical with 
those of by-gone ages." 

Discarding, therefore, as non-proven, such deduction as the exist- 
ence of negro races in early Europe, there are other circumstances 
which favor the probability that, even subsequently to humatile 
man, inferior types of humanity preceded the immigration into (or 
rather, perhaps, inferential occupancy of) Scandinavia, Germany, 
France, Spain, and Italy, by high-caste Indo-Germanic races. See 
philological inductions of Maury [supra, p. 43]. 

I have read somewhere, though my note of the work is mislaid, 
that Prof. Eetzius has met, in the peat-bogs and oldest sepulchres of 
Northern Europe, with skeletons of a Mongolic or hyperborean (Lapp ?) 
type, of an age anterior to the cairns and barrows wherein he and 
Nilsson, 331 recognize those of oraehy-kephalie and dolicho-kephalic 
races — these last being, to some extent, precursors of the historical 
Norsemen, Danes, Swedes, Jutes, Saxons, &c, scattered along the 
western Baltic coasts. 

De Gobineau, 332 notwithstanding some slight inadvertences due to 
velocity of thought and composition, joined to the use of the term 
"finnique" (Finnish) in senses which I fancy to be historically un- 
tenable, 333 has certainly brought out some startling phenomena on the 
"primitive populations of Europe." To his brilliant pages I must 
refer for sketches of early Thracians, Illyrians, Etruscans, lheres, 
Galls, and Italiots. They are painted by a master-hand. 

331 Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvanare, &c, Christianstad, 4to, 1838; PI. J), pp. 1-13. 

332 lnigalilc des Races Humaines, Paris, 8vo, 1855 ; III, passim, Chapters I-IV, and pp. 2, 
19, 28. 

333 As Uralians in geographical origin, no Finns could have been in primitive France. Cf. 
the authorities in Desmoulins, Races Humaines, pp. 53-5, 154: — also, Kxapb'oth, Tableaux, 
p. 234. 



512 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

' The upshot is, that, in common with Gerard, 334 another polygenist, 
progressive ethnology must, sooner or later, face the question, — 
whether primordial Europe was not inhabited by some indigenous 
Europeans ; long before the historical advance, westwards (whence?), 
of those three groups of proximate races denominated Celtic, Teu- 
tonic, and Sclavonian? De Brotonne 335 had prepared us for the 
conjecture, that the above triple migration had overlapped, as it 
were, a pre-existent population. Kombst and Keith Johnston 336 have 
beautifully illustrated the secondary formations of humanity in the 
British Isles; of which Wilson 337 indicates much material for inqui- 
ries into the primary. Mr. Thomas Wright, 338 and other distinguished 
antiquaries in England, by determining the cemeteries and artistic 
vestiges of the Anglo-Saxon period, facilitate our apprehension of 
other remains to these anterior or posterior; while M. Alfred 
Maury 339 suggests, to national archaeologists, the true processes 
through which to recover and harmonize multitudinous fragments 
of some ante-historical races of France. 

Reasoning by analogy, it would (now that we are beginning to 
understand better some of the ancient superpositions of immigrant, 
or Allophylian, races, in other continents, upon aboriginal popula- 
tions of the soil) become somewhat exceptional were Europe not to 
present exemplifications of that which, elsewhere, is rising to the 
dignity of a law. The Qagots, the Coliberts of Bas-Poitou, the 
Ohuatas of Majorca, the Marans of Auvergne, the Oiseliers of the 
duchy of Bouillon, the Cacous of Paray, the Jews of Gevaudan, 
&c., whose prolonged existence, and sometimes whose historical 
derivation, are discussed with so much erudition by Michel, 340 prove, 
that all exuviae of such unstoried races of man are, as yet, neither 
obliterated nor fully enumerated ; even in the World's most archseo- 
logically-prepense community. 

Vain, at the same time, must be any effort to search for such 

334 Bistoire des Races Primitives de VEurope, depuis leur formation jusqu'a leur rencontre- 
dans la Gaule, Bruxelles, 12mo, 1849; p. 389. 

333 Filiations et Migrations des Peuples, Paris, 8vo, 1837. 

336 Physical Atlas, new ed., Edinburgh, fol., 1855; PI. 33, and pp. 109-110, "Ethno- 
graphic Map of Great Britain and Ireland." 

337 Archozology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Edinburgh, 8vo, 1851 ; pp. 168-87, 
695-9. 

338 Anglo-Saxon Antiquities (Memoirs of the Hist. Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire), 
Liverpool, 8vo, 1855 ; pp. 38-9. 

339 Questions relatives & I' Ethnologic Anciennc de la France, (Extrait de l'Annuaire de la 
Socie'te' Imperiale des Antiquaries de France pour 1852), Paris, 18mo, 1853; pp. 22, 40-1. 

340 Bistoire des Races Maudites de la France et de VEspagne, Paris, 8vo, 1847 : 2 vols. 
passim. See also Priohakd, Nat. Bist. of Man, 1855; I, pp. 258-74; for other "Abo- 
rigines." 



THE POLYGENISTS. 513 

petty relics of lost nations in the terse nomenclature, or within the 
geographical area covered by, the Xth chapter of G-enesis. rlo 
ethnic indications, in this ancient ehorograph, carry us, northwards 
or westwards, beyond the coasts of the Euxine, Archipelago, and 
Mediterranean (not even occidentally as far as Italy ; except in the 
doubtful location of Tarshish, TRESIS, — Tartessus in Spain ? or 
Tarsus in Cilicia? 341 A document which, at every explanatory gloss 
and in its local tendency of sentiment, betrays Ohaldcean authorship ; 
and whose utmost antiquity of compilation cannot, without violating 
exegetical rules, be fixed earlier than Assyria's empire at the apogee 
of its might — being, I think, a sort of catalogue of Shalmanassar's, 
or similar monarch's, satrapies — would be rejected, at this enlight- 
ened day, as apochryphal, did it exhibit phenomena foreign to its 
natural horizon of knowledge. But it does not. Taking its first 
editorship at between- the 7th and 10th centuries b. c, its principles 
of projection are in accordance with historical circumstances ; which 
certainly were not Mosaic. 

"It is thus," observes Courtet de ITsle, 342 "that Moses could not 
have spoken of Turkish, Mongol, or Toungouse populations, which 
in his time were still concealed from view in the most oriental part 
of Asia. The Chinese, especially, constituted already a very ancient 
society, at the time to which the date of the Hebrew books may be 
referred; but, at no epoch whatever, do the traditions of Western 
Asia embrace events relating to the Chinese." The same touchstone 
is applied by this skilful polygenist to the Coraeans, hyperboreans, 
Americans and negroes; about whom he says — "In the posterity 
of KTham [which is merely Shame, Egypt] are particularly comprised 
the indigenous populations of the southern part of the ancient world: 
it is a swarthy (noirdtre) race, which it would be erroneous to com- 
pound with the negro type. Everything, in fact, attests that negroes 
are not contained in the genealogy of Moses." 

If, by way of example, for ethnic supeipositions of higher types 
over an autochthonous group of races, we appeal to Hindostan, 
Prichard's own chart, 343 together with the posthumous edition of his 

341 Types of Mankind, pp. 477-9: — Barker, Lares and Penates, Cilicia and its Governors, 
London, 8vo, 1853; pp. 210-11. The determination of Tartessus, as Tarshish whence apes 
(Kophlm, II Kings, X, 22) were exported, cannot be decided through Zoology. De Blain- 
ville (Osteographie, pp. 28-49) considers the species to have been the Pithecus ruber of 
Ethiopia : in which case Tarshish must have lain, like Ophir, down the Eed Sea. Gervais 
(Mammiferes, p. 76) prefers the magot of Barbary; and removes the difficulty I suggested 
(op. cit. 479) of "cocks and hens," by proposing ostriches. Quatremere (Me'moire sur le 
Pays d'Ophir, Mem. de l'Acad., Paris, 1845, pp. 862-75) thinks they were perroouets. 

942 Tableau ethnographique du Genre Humain, Paris, 8vo, 1849; pp. 73-4, 69. 

343 Six ethnographical Maps, with a sheet of Letterpress, London, fol., 1843 ; Plate 1st, 
"Asia," Nos. 10, " Aboriginal mountain-tribes of India." 

33 



514 



THE MONOGENIST S AND 



last work, 344 furnishes many instances of surviving aborigines. These 
have been more copiously and critically examined by Lieutenant- 
General Briggs, 345 whose conclusions are the following : 

" 1. That the Hindus [i. e. the Aryian, or white people's immigra- 
tions] entered India from a foreign country, and that they found it 
pre-occupied by inhabitants. 

2. That by slow degrees they possessed themselves of the whole 
of the soil, reducing to serfage those they could retain upon it. 

3. That they brought with them the Sanscrit language, a tongue 
different from that of the aborigines. 

4. That they introduced into the country municipal institutions. 

5. That the aborigines differ in every respect from the Hindus. 

6. Lastly ; that the aborigines throughout India are derived from 
one common source." 

Allowing this last conclusion to be correct, it becomes positive 
that the source of this aboriginal group of races in Hindostan must 
be radically distinct from that of the later Sanscritic intruders, — 
whose earliest monuments, the Vedas, trace them backwards to 
Sogdiana, Bactriana and Persia, as their own primordial homesteads, 
where their characteristics seem to blend into races of the Arian 
group. Briggs enumerates, among extant indigenous tribes of 
India : — 



The Bengies in Bengal, 
" Tirhus in Tirhut, 
" Koles in Kolywara and Kolwan, 
" Malas in Malda and Malpur, 
" Domes in Domapur, &c. &c, 
" Mirs in Mirwara, 
" Bhils in Bhilwara and Bhilwan, 
" Mahars in Maha Rastra (Mahratta), 
" Mans in Mandesa, 
" Gonds in Gondwara or Gondwana, 
" Garrows in Bhagalpur, 
" Sonthals in Cattack, 
" Bhars in Gorakpur, 
" Chtris in Ghazipur, 



the Dhanuks in Behar, 
" Dhers in Sagor, 
" Minas in Amblr, 
" Ramusis in Telingana, 
" Bedars in Dekhan, 
" Cherumars in Malabar, 
" Curumbas in Canara, 
" Vedars in Travancore, 
" Marawas at the South, 
" Kallars in Tinevelly, 
" Pullars in Tanjore, 
" Patties in Arcot, 
" Chenchis in Mysore, 
" Chenciwars of Telingana : 



s*4 Natural History of Man (supra, note 172,) I, pp. 248-57. 

845 Two lectures on the aboriginal race of India, as distinguished from the Sanscritic or Hindu 
Race — R. Asiatic Soc. , London, 8vo, 1852 ; pp. 6. — Compare A Sketch of Assam, with some 
account of the Hill Tribes, by an officer; London, 8vo, 1847, passim, for many other abori- 
gines on the confines of Indo-China ; — and Hooker (Himalayan Journals, London, 8vo, 
1854; I, pp. 127-41), for the Lepchas &c, and (II, pp. 14) for the Harrum-mos and others. 
For the affinities or divergencies of Dravirian idioms in relation to other groups of tongues, 
the reader will be unable to find more masterly elucidations than in my friend M. Maury's 
Chapter I, pp. 52-5, 74-6, 84, ante. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 515 

besides the Kamiwars, Yelmiwars, Barki, Dondassi, Bandipote, Talliar, 
and others. 

This arid catalogue of names indicates the number and variety of 
these seemingly-proximate races. "With the exception of, here and 
there, more or less defective, sketches of a Garrow, a Tuda, a Naga, 
a Siahpush, a Bhot'iya, or a Ceylonese, I have seen no authentic 
portaits of Hindostanic aborigines whence ideas about their several 
characteristics can be obtained. As for their crania, "ce n'est pas le 
genre" among Anglo-Indians to preserve, for science, those they cut 
off; such men as Hodgson of ISTepaul, and Cunningham of Ladak, 346 
being honorable exceptions. A succinct resume of aboriginal families 
of mankind known to exist within the "East Indian Realm" of 
zoology, has been compiled from the latest sources, with his usual 
ability, by Maury. 347 Space restricts me to reiteration of the lament, 
over the ethnological supineness of those who ought to fill scientific 
collectorships in India, implied in his remarks : — "These indigenous 
tribes, of which the debris still wander in the north-west of America, 
those insular septs that navigators have encountered in Polynesia, 
Oceanica, and Indian Archipelago — of such, Asia even at this day 
yet offers us the pendants. At an ancient epoch, which it is im- 
possible rigorously to assign, the centre and the south of this part 
of the world were inhabited by those savage races that Hindoo civili- 
zation has pushed away before it, and which Chinese society has 
ejected toward the southern extremities of its empire. It is in the 
almost impenetrable defiles, which separate Hindostan from Thibet 
and from China, wherein these disinherited populations have sought 
refuge. There they subsist still ; and there they will continue to 
subsist until English colonization [as in the pending case of the 
Santals, 1855-6] shall have forever blotted them out from the soil. 
It is with races of men as with races of animals, which Providence 
creates, and afterwards abandons to destruction. * * * Who can 
count how many races have already disappeared ; what populations, 
of which we ignore the history, the very existence, have quitted 
our globe, without leaving on it their name, at least, for a trace !" 

Only since 1850, through Arnaud and Vayssiere, 348 have we heard 
of the Akhdam (servants) of Southern Arabia ; probably last degraded 
relics of the aboriginal Cushite, or Himyarite, stock; to be added to 

346 Lad&k, physical, statistical and "historical, with notices of the surrounding countries, London, 
8vo, 1854; pp. 285-312; Plates 10-11, 13-18, 22-24. 

347 Les Populations Primitives du Nord de V Hindouslan — Extrait du Bulletin de la Sociele de 
Geographic; Paris, 1854; p. 39. 

M8 " Les Akhdam de l'Y<jmen, leur origine probable, leurs mceurs " — Journal Asialiquc, 
Paris, April, 1850 ; pp. 380-2. 



516 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

those more favorably known at Mareb and Zhaffar as speakers of 
JEhkili. 3 ' 9 " For the fades, these Akhdarn differ much from the Arab, 
who dwells alongside of them; possessing, on the contrary, the 
strongest resemblance to the Abyssinians and the people of the 
Samhar [littoral Abyssinians on the Red Sea] ; who, according to M. 
Lefevre ( Voy. en Abyss.), ' present the greatest analogy with the 
Hindostanic race.'" These Akhdarn are pariahs, reputed "unclean" 
by the Arabs, who despise their four castes with inveteracy. The 
color of their skin is reddish, like the Himyarites (from dhmar, red), 
and their congeners the Habesh; being entirely different to the 
lighter complexions of their lords, the Semitic Arabs — although 
both types have, from immemorial time, resided in the same climate. 

But, amid illustrations that spring up on every side to fortify my 
argument of aboriginal populations, I must refrain from further 
notice of more than one or two. 

M. D'Avezac, and other ethnologues who have studied GuancJie 
traditions and Portuguese accounts of the conquest of the Canary 
Isles, prove satisfactorily that, despite such furious massacres, the 
women were saved in large numbers by the invaders. The result 
was naturally an amalgamation, between the female Guanches and the 
Portuguese settlers, that still underlies the present population, 350 — 
into which, importations from Africa have since copiously infiltrated 
Mgritian blood of many varieties. Now, the same combination of 
circumstances occurred in Cuba. 351 

Discovered by Columbus, on the 18th October, 1492, this Island, 
according to his Journal, contained a somewhat civilized people, 
timid and simple, already possessors of the dog ; who were " neither 
black nor brown, but of the color of Canary-islanders, with women 
whiter still." They lived in great fear of the Caribs, from whom 
they differed.in almost every characteristic; 352 and seem to have been 
of the same family as the Ygneris of Haiti, and other isles of the 

348 Types of Mankind, pp. 489-92. The discoverer, my old friend and colleague in Egypt 
for many years, M. Fulgence Fresnel, is now no more. Bagdad, last spring, was the tomb 
of this enthusiastic orientalist, — in Arabic studies never surpassed. 

350 The only specimen of this mixed stock that I have seen, was a so-called mulatto, 
exceedingly robust and intelligent, native of the Canaries, by name Narcisso; who, in 1851, 
nourished at Bangor, Maine ; as my friend A. P. Bradbury, Esq., of that ilk, may remember. 
Narcisso's red complexion and muscular vigor completely bore out the southern specimens 
of Dr. Nott (Types of Mankind, p. 374). 

351 Bertholet, Essai historique sur Vile du Cuba, &e., et "Analyse de l'ouvrage de Ramon 
de la Sagra" — Bulletin de la Socicte de Geographie, July 1846; pp. 6, 12, 20—26. 

352 Gosse, Deformations arlificielles du Crane, Paris, 8vo, 1855; pp. 102-5; citing De 
Navakette (Relations des qualre Voyages entrepris par Christophe Colombe, Paris, 1S28), and 
Ferdinand Denis (Revue de Paris, LV. supplement). For the Caribs, see D'Orbiqnt, 
VBomme Americain—'Yoy. dans FAm^rique du Sud, Paris, 4to, 1839. 



THE POLYGEKISTS. 517 

Antilles, whose traditions dated back to the occupancy of Florida. At 
St. Domingo, Columbus was particularly struck with the whiteness 
of their skin, as well as with their culture and inoffensive habits (no 
weapons) ; circumstances which strongly contrast them with the red- 
dish-olive hue and ferocity of the continental Caribs. Their posses- 
sion of the dog, too, before Spanish communications, is an interesting 
fact ; but I do not know whether its species has been compared with 
the enormous mastiffs (apparently) of the Guanches, 353 whose skele- 
tons turn up, now and then, among mummied human remains at the 
Canaries. 

This original population of Cuba, by some writers exaggerated 
to a million, and more reasonably estimated by Fray Luis Bertran 
at about 200,000, had been reduced to 14,000 by a. d. 1517. Las 
Casas, Jose Maria de la Torre, and Valdes, show that there were still 
some extant in 1533 ; but Diego de Soto, in 1538, slaughtered the 
remainder so effectually, that, about 1553, Gomara says there was no 
longer a native alive. Bertholet, however, considers such complete 
extinction over-stated ; because, while many of the males were trans- 
ported to the South American continent, the women were retained 
by the Spaniards. Precisely the same destruction of native Antillian 
life, — in order to make way for a bastard race since bred between 
exotic Spaniards and imported negroes — occurred on other islands. 
Thus, Priaulx observes, "Haiti, which, at its discovery, contained 
1,000,000 inhabitants, — sixty years after, 15,000, — and in 1729, the 
aborigines were extinct." 35 * 

A curious report to the Spanish court [Cartas de varones de Sevilla), 
made by Fray Diego Sarmiento, Bishop of Cuba, 1550-1, proves the 
fact whilst deprecating the reason. — "The Indians diminish and 
disappear without propagating themselves ; because the Spaniards 
and the metis [already numerous in 58 years] marry the Indian wo- 
men ; and that Indian male who, at this day, could procure one 80 
years old, is even very lucky. I believe [continues the charitable 
Diocesan] that, in order to preserve and restore the population of 
this island, it would be well to bring over some Indian females from 
Florida, for the purpose of uniting them with the Indians of this 
country." Nevertheless there existed still, in 1701, some descendants 
of the old stock at Iguani; and Bertholet, quoting Milne Edwards's 
law that, after several generations, the old blood will occasionally 
"crop out," shows how this explains many ethnic points of Cuban 

353 D'Avezac, Isles de VAfrique; — Usher, Types of Mankind, p. 342 ; — Prichard, Nat. Hist., 
1855 ; I, p. 272. 

354 Quozstiones Mosaicce, p. 298, note, — citing P. Marqat au P. de la Neuville, Lellres 
£difiantes, vol. VII 



518 THE MOKOGENISTS AND 

physiology ; precisely as in like manner, similar causes produced the 
same effects at the Canary Isles. 355 

From Cuba 356 to the Island of St. Vincent the transition is natural. 
Here we should still behold the aboriginal Caribs, but for tbeir ex- 
pulsion "en masse," in 1796, at a cost of one million sterling, by 
English settlers, to the island of Roatan. 357 Already, from 1675, the 
shipwreck of a Guinea slaver near St. Vincent had infused so much 
exotic negro blood into the native stock as to have divided the latter 
into black and yellow Caribs. Transplanted again, by Spaniards, to 
the main-land of Honduras, these mulatto-Caribs found themselves 
in the midst of another population of half-breeds ; viz. : the Sambos 
of the Musquito shore, formed there, since the 17th century, between 
survivors from the wreck of another African slaver and the native 
Indian tribes, amid whom, also, European buccaneers had not failed 
to bequeath many varieties of white blood. This infiltration of the 
essentially-domesticable qualities of negro races into the less tame- 
able Indian (although the Central American approach the Toltecan 
rather than the Barbarous*® tribes in social tendencies), has not been 
without its good effects in producing a laborious population of maho- 
gany cutters : whereas, in the everglades of Florida, crosses between 
run-away negresses and the truly-barbarous Indian exhibit but incar- 
nate devils for ferocity and hostility to civilization. Recent events 
on the Panama isthmus 359 confirm the deleterious consequences of 
such intermixtures, prognosticated five years ago by Berthold See- 
man. 360 

" Morton informs us, besides," wrote Dr. Gosse, alluding to a cha- 
racteristic African propensity for aping dominant races, 361 " that the 
shipwrecked negroes at St. Vincent [Crania Americana, p. 240) had 
at first deformed their heads, in imitation of the Caribs, their masters ; 
but, so soon -as emancipated, they continued it in sign of liberty. This 
was already the opinion of Leblond (Voyage aux Antilles, 1767-1802, 

855 Bertholet, " Guanches," Memoires de la Societe Ethnologique, Paris, 8vo, 1841 ; PaTt 
I, pp. 130-46, 1843; II, pp. 83-111. These intermixtures are unnoticed by Pkichakd, 
Nat. Bist. of Man, 1855; I, pp. 272-4; or in II, pp. 590, 638-640. 

356 One cannot, of course, within 200 pages, discuss all the collateral questions bearing 
upon the transplantation of races from lands where they were indigenous to countries where 
they are not ; but, for an exposition of the present ruined state of the emancipated Antilles, 
consult, above all, "Our West-Indian Colonies:" Jamaica, by H. B. Evans, M. R. C.S., late 
Surgeon superintendent of immigrants, Lucea, Jamaica; London, 8vo, 1855. 

357 Squier, Notes on Central America, New York, 8vo, 1855; pp. 208, 212-17. 

358 Morton, Physical Type of the American Indians ; — Types of Mankind, pp. 276-80. 

359 Wermuth, "A propos du massacre de Panama;" The American, Paris, II, No. 76; 7 
June, 1856. 

3 «> Voyage of E. M. S. Herald, 1845-51, London, 8vo, 1853; I, p. 302. 
361 Deformations artificielles dn Crane, p. 126. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 519 

p. 154) : ' They felt,' says he, ' that this ineffaceable mark would for- 
ever distinguish them from the African race, who were being sold as 
slaves in islands inhabited by the whites.' " 

Heureuz le peuple dont VMstoire est ennuyeuse, might not, perhaps, 
be applied by Montesquieu to the wretched peoples referred to ; but 
fear lest its point should be directed to the above excerpta compels 
me to finish with a clew to the philosophy of these complicated amal- 
gamations. It is from the pen of one who, as regards American 
archaeology in general, and Central American ethnology in particular, 
has no rival amidst his many admiring friends at the present hour. 362 

"Anthropological science has determined the existence of two 
laws, of vital importance in their application to men and nations. 

" First. That in all cases where a free amalgamation takes place 
between two different stocks, unrestrained by what is sometimes 
called prejudice, but which is, in fact, a natural instinct, the result is 
the final absolute absorption of one into the other. This absorption 
is more rapid as the races or families thus brought in contact approxi- 
mate in type, and in proportion as one or the other preponderate in 
numbers ; that is to say, Nature perpetuates no human hybrids, as, 
for instance, a permanent race of mulattoes. 

" Second. That all violations of the natural distinctions of race, or 
of those instincts which were designed to perpetuate the superior 
races in their purity, invariably entail the most deplorable results, 
affecting the bodies, intellects, and moral perceptions of the nations 
who are thus blind to the wise designs of Nature, and unmindful of 
her laws. In other words, the offspring of such combinations or 
amalgamations are not only generally deficient in physical constitu- 
tion, in intellect, and in moral restraint, but to a degree which often 
contrasts unfavorably with any of the original stocks. 

" In no respect are these deficiencies more obvious than in matters 
affecting government. "We need only point to the anarchical states 
of Spanish America to verify the truth of the propositions laid down. 
In Central and South America, and Mexico, we find a people not 
only demoralized from the unrestrained association of different races, 
but also the superior stocks becoming gradually absorbed into the 
lower, and their institutions disappearing under the relative barba- 
rism of which the latter are the exponents." 

362 Squier, op. cit., pp. 54-8. See, for the same argument, that the present fall of the 
Spanish race in America is to be chiefly ascribed to their proclivity (as a dark type) to amal- 
gamate with any race still darker — D'Halloy (Races Humaines, pp. 44-5). "We meet 
indeed," well says Davis, "with confusion of blood on a great scale, but look in vain for a 
new race. Nature asserts her dominion on all hands in a deterioration and degradation, the 
fatal and depopulating consequences of which it is appalling to contemplate." (Crania Bri- 
tannica, p. 7, note.) 



520 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

With reluctance I must terminate these digressional notices of 
human autochthones in different zoological realms. " The ancients," 
well remarks Courtet de l'lsle, 363 " unanimously professed belief in 
autochthones. * * * Now, this principle of indigenousness, consecrated 
among animals and plants, 364 was entirely equivalent, among the 
Greeks, to the principle which the plurality of races establishes at 
the present day." It is traceable in Homer, Hesiod, and Hippocrates. 
Ephorus of Cyme sustained it when he divided mankind into four 
races, according to the four points of the compass ; and Aristotle 
held it where he adopts three types, " Scythians, Egyptians, and 
Thracians." The writer of Xth Genesis 365 had previously spread 
out his nations, cities, tribes, and countries, into a tripartite ethnieo- 
geographical distribution, symbolized by "Shem,Ham, and Japheth;" 
which arrangement Knobel 366 agrees with me in denominating the 
yellow, the swarthy, and the white types. The Egyptians, centuries 
previously, had already divided mankind, as known to them, into 
four — the red, the yellow, the white, and the black races ; calling 
themselves, as men of the red or honorable color, by the term 
"rotu," ReT, race "par excellence:" 367 and, about nine centuries 
subsequently, four nations— Lydian (Japethic), Scythian (not alluded 
to in Xth Genesis), Negro (African, and also excluded from that 
chart), and Chaldsean (Semitic) — were carved on the rock-hewn 
sepulchre of Darius : 36S while Linnaeus, 3500 years after the Diospo- 
litan ethnographer, at first tried to classify human natural divisions 
into four, according to the four quarters of the globe. 

Wholly omitted as such things are in the last edition of Prichard, 
the anthropologist, in lieu of the preceding facts on hybridity, is 
favored with any quantity of "sentiment;" 369 — mostly thrown away, 
their ethnological bases being mostly false. Until science has 
stridden over the threshold in these new inquiries of the Mortonian 
school, we may say of sentiment what Father Richard Simon's Car- 
dinal 370 replied to an anxious theologer — "Questo e buono per la 
Predica." 

363 Tableau Elhnographique, p. 67. 

364 See particularly, as the latest enunciation of zoological science, the addresses of Prof. 
Agassiz before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Albany, — 
reported in the New York Herald, 26, 27, 28 Aug., 1856. 

365 Types of Mankind, Part II, passim. 

»* Die Volkertafel der Genesis, Giessen, 8vo, 1850; p. 13. 

as? Types of Mankind, pp. 84-86, 247-9; wood-cuts, figs. 1, 162, 163, 164, 165:— to 
which add, De Rouge, Tombeau d'Aahmes, chef des Nautonniers, Paris, 4to, 1851 ; pp. 41-2, 
56: — and Brugsch, Reiseberichte, Berlin, 8vo, 1855; p. 331. 

368 Pulszkt, ante, Chap. II, p. 150, fig. 35. 

339 Nat. History of Man, 1S55 ; II, pp. 657-714. 

370 Hist. crit. de I'Aneien Testament. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 521 

"0 ye mitred heads! lay not 
Approving hands on skulls that cannot teach, 
And will not learn." 

(Cowpek.) 

Probably autochthones, certainly aboriginal, were the men of 
prognathous and otherwise inferior type whose humatile crania, in 
the caverns and diluvium of Europe, instigated my excursus in quest 
of parallels. Of these, however, I have seen none of the true Bel- 
gian or Austrian specimens : those pointed out to me in the magni- 
ficent G-alerie d' Anthropologic at the Jardin des Plantes, by my friends 
MM. Jacquard and Rousseau, being, with one exception, ancient 
Gaulish, Keltic, or Etruscan. I obtained photographic copies of the 
most interesting, together with that of the exceptional skull marked 
"Craue (Gard)— Type oelte. M. Serres." These 371 1 had the pleasure 
of passing on, in London, to the cabinet of our obliging colleague Mr. 
J. Barnard Davis, of Shelton, Staff.; in whose hands, as joint author 
of Omnia Britannica, they may become really available to science, 
through comparisons with the wide range of cognate British skulls 
now undergoing his and Dr. Thurnham's critical analyses. As a 
specimen, merely, of the high scientific tone adopted by these gen- 
tlemen, I cannot refrain from reproducing their opening sentences 
on the Historical Ethnology of Britain. 372 

" It is now generally admitted that the plants and animals which 
cover the surface of the globe are to be regarded as forming groups, 
each having a specific centre, from and around which, within limits 
determined by natural laws as to climate, temperature, &c, the 
several species have been diffused. The plants and animals com- 
posing the flora and fauna of the British Islands are, however, not 
peculiar to them, but are almost without exception identical with 
those of different parts of the continent of Europe ; and thus the 
existence of a specific centre for the isolated area of these islands, 
or, in other words, any special creation of plants and animals within 
their limits, cannot with any probability be admitted. 

" The late distinguished Professor E. Forbes, by a remarkably 
happy example of philosophical induction, has shown that the 
terrestrial animals and flowering plants now inhabiting these islands 
must have migrated hither over continuous land, which in the 
course of subsequent geological changes was destroyed ; and that 
this diffusion by migration occupied extended periods of time, 
having various climatal conditions, before, during and after, the 

311 Reduced copies of some of them have attracted Dr. Meigs's notice in his Chapter 
III, figs. 29, 35. 

S' 2 Crania Britannica, Decade I, London, 4to, 1856; p. 44. Cf. Meigs's Chap. Ill, p. 
301, fig. 29, ante — for the cranioscopical indicia so far attained. 



522 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

great Glacial epoch. The characteristic and all the universally 
distributed plants and animals of these islands, belong to the Cen- 
tral European fauna and flora, or great Germanic type. But in 
addition to this, the prevailing, it is shown that there are the remains 
of no fewer than four other floras occupying more or less limited 
areas in Britain, and each having its specific centre in some part of 
the continent of Europe. Three of these belong to more southern, 
the fourth to a more northern latitude or isotherme. The most 
ancient of our floras, Professor Forbes considers to be only peculiar 
to the west and south-west of Ireland, and which is shown to be 
identical with that of the north of Spain ; a geological union or 
Close approximation with which country seems to be the only method 
of explaining the presence of so characteristic a flora, including the 
hardier Saxifrages and Heaths of the Asturias, and such plants as 
Arabis ciliata, Pinguicula grandiflora, and Arbutus unedo. The iso- 
lation of this West Irish flora, or Asturian type, probably took place 
by the destruction of the intermediate land in the glacial period. 
No traces of any associated fauna remain." 

M. Maury's philological inductions (supra) equally corroborate the 
view that certain inferior and indigenous races of man, in pre-historic 
Albion as well as in primordial ISTorth-western Europe, were suc- 
ceeded by conquering tribes of the "great Germanic type." 



PART IV. 

We may now reconsider some of the practical issues of this in- 
quiry. 

It has been shown, 1st, that in America, humatile men and huma- 
tile monkeys occupy the same palseontological zones ; — 2d, that, 
whilst all such remains of man are exclusively of the American 
Indian type, the monkeys called Hapale, Cebus, Callithrix, &c, are 
equally " terrse geniti" of this continent; no bimane or quadrumane 
examples of identical " species" of either being found, fossil, humatile, 
or living, out of it ; — 3d, that, in their respective epochs of existence, 
both, with the slightest modifications of so-termed "species" on the 
monkeys' side, have existed from the geological period of Lund's 
Brazilian caves, coupled with the extinct genera of animals dis- 
covered in them, down to the present day, contemporaneous; — 4th, 
that, finally, permanence of type, as well for humanity as for simiadse, 
is firmly established in both genera, from the hour in which we are 



THE POLTGENISTS. 523 

living, back to a vastly remote, if not incalculable, era of unrecorded 
time. 

Now, were some ethnologist to inquire of any naturalist whether 
he believed that genus Hapdle, Oebus, or CallitJirix, had clambered 
round from Mesopotamia, via Bhering's Straits, to Peru ; or had 
swum across the Atlantic from Africa to Brazil, if not, perchance, 
athwart the Pacific from Borneo to Chili, as one alternative ; or, 
whether American simice were created in America, as the other : I 
presume such naturalist might, without committal, respond to this 
query by propounding another to the ethnologist, viz. : "Don't you 
think that, whichever way American man came to this continent, it 
was along the identical route by which American monkeys had pio- 
neered the track for him ?" 

For myself, I cannot find out how either came. Here both are, 
and have been, from the earliest ante-historical period we may guess 
at. Whenever an ethnographer will obligingly point out to me any 
given primordial link, between human autochthones of the Old World 
and aborigines of the New, that archaeological criticism is unable to 
shatter, I may trouble a naturalist to acquaint me with some mode 
by which old CallitJirix primsevus protopithecus, of Brazil, held inter- 
course anciently with his elder DryopitJiecus Fontani of France. 

This is the name just fixed by M. Lartet, — the first discoverer of 
fossil simice m twenty years ago, and five years after Cuvier's decease, 
— to a new species of anthropoid monkey exhumed by M. Fontan, 
from a bank of marly-clay, at Saint-Gaudens (Haute- Garonne) near 
the Pyrenees. 374 

It was about the same time last month 375 1 commenced that part 
of my present MS. which enumerated {ante, p. 459) the different fossil 
monkeys hitherto disinterred ; and the coincidence of M. Fontan's 
unforeseen exhumation of a larger and higher type, in Europe too, 
than any before known, is so gratifying, that I prefer to let what I 
had then written stand, and to avail myself here of M. Lartet's most 
opportune improvements. It is to our collaborator Prof. Joseph 
Leidy, that I owe communication of the "tirage a part" sent to him 
last mail by M. Lartet. 

"The pieces of this monkey," explains Lartet, "that M. Fontan 
has charged me to present in his name to the Academy, consist in 
two halves of a lower jaw broken at their ascending rami, added to 

3.3 Df. Blainville, Oste'ographie. 

3.4 Lartet, Note sur un grand Singe fossile qui se rallache au group des Singes supe'rieurs — 
Entrait des Comptes rendus des Seances de V Academic des Sciences ; Paris, tome xliii. ; 28th 
July, 1856; with a plate, pp. 1-6. 

375 I am -writing at Philadelphia, on this 28th August, 1856. 



524 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

a fragment of the anterior face of this jaw in which the incisors were 
planted. There was fotind at the same time a humerus epiphysized 
at its two extremities." He remarks on the teeth also,- — "This 
would be a process of dentition intermediate between that of man 
and of living monkeys, except the Gibbon Siamang, in which I have 
observed the same circumstances of dentition as in our fossil monkey. 
(This gives me an opportunity to remember that the Gibbons, and in 
particular the Gibbon Siamang, placed generally by zoologists in the 
last rank of the tribe of Simians, or Superior Monkeys, furnish not- 
withstanding, through their skeleton, a totality of characteristics 
approaching very much more considerably the human type than one 
can find in the Orang, or even in the Chimpanzee.)" 

" In risumi, the new fossil monkey comes evidently to place itself, 
with some superior characters at certain points of view, in the group 
of the Simians, which already comprises the Chimpanzee, the Orang, 
the Gorilla, the Gibbons, and the little fossil Monkey of Sausan [Plio- 
pithecus antiquus, Gerv.). It differs from all these monkeys through 
some dental details ; and, more manifestly still, by the very-apparent 
shortening of the face. The reduced size of the incisors being allied 
with great development of the molars indicates a regimen essentially 
frugiverous. The little that is known, furthermore, of the bony 
structure of the limbs, denotes more of agility than muscular energy. 
One would be, therefore, thus induced to suppose that this Mon- 
key, of very large size, lived habitually upon trees, as do the Gibbons 
of the present epoch. In consequence I will propose to designate it 
by the generic name of Dryopithecus (from drus, tree, oak [found like- 
wise amongst the lignites of the same Pyrensean region], and pithe- 
kos, monkey). In dedicating it as species to the enlightened natu- 
ralist to whom palaeontology is indebted for this important acquisi- 
tion, it would be the Dryopithecus Fontani. 

" Six fossil monkeys, then, are henceforward to be counted in Eu- 
rope, viz : two in England, the Macacus eocenus, Owen, and the Maca- 
cus pliocenus, id. ; three in France, the Pliopithecus antiquus, the Dryo- 
pithecus Fontani, and the Semnopithecus monspessulanus, which is 
probably the same as the Pithecus maritimus of M. de Christol. 
Lastly, the monkey of Pikermi, in Greece, named by M. A. Wagner 
Mezopithecus pentelicus. M. Gaudry and I propose, in our Memoir 
on the fossil bones of Pikermi, which will be soon presented to the 
Academy, to attach this monkey to the group of Semnopitheci, under 
the name of Semnopithecus pentelicus." 

Bones of the Macrotherium, Rhinoceros, Dicrocerus elegans, &c, 
were also collected at the same spot, by M. Fontan, and in the same 
medium tertiary (miocene) deposits. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 525 

Thus, in one short month since this essay was commenced, advan- 
cing science has added another grand link to the chain of organic 
remains which now connects the faunse of the past old world with 
those of the present. Already, from the previously known fossil 
Gibbon, not a far remove from human likeness, we have mounted up, 
in the graduated scale of organization, to the level of the highest 
living anthropomorphous apes (Orang-utan,™ Chimpanzee, and Go- 
rilla), through this precious discovery of Bryopithecus Fontani. 

It will opportunely exemplify how prepared really-scientific men 
are now, all over the woiid, for these revelations from " the Book of 
Nature — which cannot lie," to present here an extract from the ad- 
dress of my friend Pkof. Riddell, delivered at New Orleans, on the 
25th Feb., 1856 — some six months before M. Lartet announced at 
Paris this astounding " confirmation." 

" I must allude in very general terms to the recent progress of 
Geology. The philosophical views of Lyell, respecting the dyna- 
mical causes that have produced the geological aspect of our planet 
during the lapse of past ages, are gaining more and more fully the 
assent of the cultivators of this science. Instead of evoking, as a 
probable cause, the agency of imaginary cataclysms, or general and 
sudden convulsions of nature, to explain the origin of mountain 
upheavals, terrene depressions, the petrifaction of organic remains, 
the extinction of successive races of animals and plants, the indura- 
tion, crystallization, and disintegration of rock strata, Mr. Lyell 
alleges that we have reason to suppose all these, and more, have 
resulted from the long-continued agency of such dynamic causes as 
continue to manifest their action at the present time. In some in- 
stances, the effects produced are hardly appreciable during the brief 
period of human life ; but we should remember that the stately hun- 
dred years, which is rarely approached, and still more rarely exceeded 
by man, when used as a measure for the probable duration of those 
vast periods of time occupied in the production and modification of 
the numerous successive geological strata, with their mineral con- 
tents and organic remains, becomes, to our limited comprehension, 
a mere infinitesimal ; a quantity too small to have assigned to it any 
sensible value in comparison. 

" The recent period, so called, now in progress, contains the relics 
of animals and plants, of species essentially identical with those now 
flourishing. It has been estimated, from data carefully obtained and 

3,6 In Malay, "Orang" means only man, and is prefixed to proper names of all nations; 
" Utan," signifying wild, designates the " Orang-utan" as the wild man, which Cbawfckd 
(Malay Grammar and Dictionary, II, p. 123) spells " Orang-utang," — its true Malayan name 
being " Miyas." Still (p. 198), " Utan" is given as the synonym for wild, wilderness. 



526 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

unobjectionable, that our Mississippi delta, south of the latitude ot 
Baton Rouge, pertaining, of course, to the recent period, has occu- 
pied no less a time than 120,000 years in its formation. The parti- 
culars of this computation I need not now trouble you with. 

" It is a very common occurrence that sweeping assertions are made 
in palaeontology, based upon negative data. That is, because certain 
classes or genera of organic remains have not yet been found in the 
older fossiliferous strata, therefore they did not then exist on the face 
of the earth or in its waters. I think this practice is prolific in false 
induction in science. The present tenants of our globe comprise per- 
haps 500,000 species of animals and plants. The organic species 
preceding these, in former ages, were in all ages probably just about 
as numerous. Palaeontologists have brought to light, from about 20 
different and successive fossiliferous formations, about 20,000 species 
of remains, nine-tenths of wbich, as from the nature of the case we 
might expect, are of marine and aquatic origin. Now, the plants 
and animals whose remains characterize these 20 formations, while 
flourishing in their respective ages, were probably, in each of the 20 
cases, as numerous in species as those contemporary with us. Aver- 
aging the known fossils to the formations, each of the twenty would 
have 1000 species, which is only l-500th of what may fairly be sup- 
posed to have existed. Admitting this reasoning as valid, two or 
three instructive conclusions would flow from it. 1st. That doubt- 
less many species of animals and plants have heretofore existed as 
well as at present, that from their habitat and habit were rarely or 
ever likely to be preserved as organic remains. 2d. There is no pro- 
bability that geologists are as yet acquainted with all, or even with 
a fiftieth part of the organic remains entombed in the various forma- 
tions constituting what may be called the rind of our globe. 3d. 
Assume at perfect random any one species, as for instance an animal 
analogous to the Ourang-Outang, the probability is 500 times greater that 
such an animal existed at any geological age, also assumed at random, 
than that his remains will, in our day, be found by geologists in the cor- 
responding formations." 377 

Fossil man, of some inferior grade, is now the only thing wanting 
to complete the palaeontological series in Europe, in order at once to 
exhibit bimanes and quadrumanes in parallel fossil development ; 
and thereby to plant the genera Simiadse and the genus Homo on one 
and the same archaeological platform. Let us hope ! "We actually 
hold in our hands the short end of the thread, through the progna- 

s " Annual Address read before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, Feb. 25th, 1856, by 
Prop. J. L. Riddell, University of Louisiana, President of the Academy, p. 4. [Interca- 
lated in my MS., at Philadelphia, 25th Jan. 1857.] 



THE POLTGENIST S. 527 

thous crania of inferior human races discovered, in the humatile phase, 
over Belgium and Austria. Science now lacks but one, only one, 
little fact more to terminate forever the question — "have human fossil 
remains been found ?" 

Again, I say, there is margin for hope ! May be, that it is neither 
in Europe nor in America that fossil humanity is to be sought for. 
Perhaps, after all, the malicious aphorism whispered by Mephis- 
topheles to Goethe in "Faust," that if humanity advances, it is spi- 
rally — might some day turn out to be as true in geographical palfe- 
ontology as it is often in ethics, and oftener in inventions. 

Not a tenth part of Asia, not a twentieth part of Africa, has as yet 
been explored by the geological pick-axe ; the inlands of Borneo, 
Sumatra, New Guinea, have not yet been trodden by the white man's 
foot, far less open to the palseontologist. It is to scientific mining 
and to I'ail-road operations, conducted only by the most civilized 
races of the world, that, within the present quarter-century, the earth 
begins to yield up her dead, and display her riches in organic remains. 
When the iron net-work, such as the "peace of Paris" already stimu- 
lates, is spread from the Neva to the Amour, from Trebizond to Cal- 
cutta, from Jerusalem to Aden, from Cape Town to Lake TTniamesi, 378 
and from Algiers to the Senegambia, perchance to the Gaboon river, 
we shall doubtless possess many more fossil monkeys, and (why 
not ?) a fossil man. 

Upon the principle of representation in the successive series of the 
faunas of each zoological zone, it should be about Borneo ■ that we 
may expect to dig up fossil analogues of Orangs and Dyaks ; about 
Guinea and Loango those of Troglodytes niger and of Gtorilla-gina, no 
less than of some human precursors of present negro races. And 
yet, up to this day, ten years after their discovery, not a living 
specimen m9 far less a fossil sample, owing to inaccessibility of their 
habitats, has been procurable, even of the Gorilla, through French 
or other colonists at the Gaboon ! 

Here, I may be allowed a digression, — not altogether irrelevant, 
because it aids to clear up doubts as to the earliest contact of the 
Saracenic Arabs, after their conquest of Barbary in the 7th century 
of our era, with Negro nations ; whom Arabian camels, then intro- 
duced on a large scale into northern Africa, first enabled the 

S78 Petermann, Miliheilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstall, &c, Gotha, 4to, 
1856; pp. 13-32; and his "Skizze einer Karte * * * des See's von Uniamesi;" — which later 
explorers seem to doubt. 

8,9 Is. Geoefroy St. Hilaire and Dureau he la Malle, in Annates des Sciences Nalurelles, 
Paris, III* se"rie, XVI, pp. 154-217. 



a 



528 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Prophet's victorious " goum-s" [Arabic for "levies" — literally get- 
ups\ to reach athwart the Sahara-deserts. It will also show how 
invaluable to ethnography are French translations of long-disre- 
garded Semitic historians, not merely those of the chosen Israelitish 
stock. Besides, the work is little known to the " reading public." 

Ebn Khaledoon (or Khaldun) x — the most erudite, philosophic, 
and unfortunate, 381 Arabian writer in Barbary during the 4th and 
5th century — tells us how, "the Molathemeen [wearers of the 
"litham," muffler, for the double object of keeping off sun and dust 
in the desert, and of hiding the face from enemies — law of the 
Dakheyl~], m a people of Sanhadjian [Berber] race, inhabited the 
sterile region that stretches away into the midst of the sandy desert 
[Sahara]. From immemorial time — from very many centuries prior 
to Islamism — they had continued to traverse that region where they 
found everything that sufficed for their wants. Keeping themselves 
thus far removed from the 'Tell' [Arabice hill, i.e., Mount Atlas], 
and from the cultivated country, they replaced its productions by 
the milk and flesh of their camels. Avoiding civilized countries, 
they had habituated themselves to isolation ; and, brave as ferocious, 
they had never bent beneath the yoke of foreign dominion." In 
short, these Sanhadjians are the perfect types of old Roman Numi- 
dians, and modern Touariks, — except, in religion, the adoption of 
Islam for Africanized-Punic fetishism — in language, a great many 
Arabic words of civilization absorbed into their Berber speech — in 
zoology, the camel for the horse — in arms, the match-lock for the 
bow. Such, too, were a cognate tribe, the Lemtouna. 

"When the Lemtouna had subjugated the desert-regions, they 
carried war amidst negro nations, in order to constrain these to 
become Mussulmans [just as we, now-a-days, through missionaries, 
are trying to make Christians of all peoples who are not — in most 
cases, amongst inferior types of man, only hastening their ultimate 
obliteration]. A large portion of the Blacks then embraced Islam ; 

380 Histoire des Berberes el des Dynasties Musulmanes de VAfrique Seplentrionah, translated 
from the Arabic by the Baeon de Slane, for account of the "Ministere de la Guerre;" 
vol. I, Algiers, 1847 ; vol. II, 1851. My exeerpta are taken chiefly from I, pp. 36-7, 53, 
184-5; — II, pp. 64-70, 104-5, 106. The history commences with the Arab conquest of 
Barbary in the 7th century, and ends during the 14th. 

381 Zeyd-abd-eb.-Rahman Ebn Ehaledoon was born at Tunis in 1332. After greatly 
distinguishing himself at the courts of Barbaresque princes, he became Grand Qadee 
(Judge) of Cairo under Ed-Dclher-Barqooq in 1384 ; when the vessel, in which his family 
had embarked on their way to him, sunk, — "Thus, one single blow deprived me for ever 
of riches, happiness, and children." He died in 1406. 

382 Lavakd, Nineveh and Babylon, 2d Exped., 1853, p. 317: — Feesnel (Arabes avant 
V Tslamisme, Paris, 1836, p. 36), shows how it was only at the ancient Arabian fair of 
Oukash, abolished in first century Hedjra, that hostile tribes could meet unmvffled. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 529 

but the remainder dispensed with it, by paying the capitation-tax 
[equally satisfactory to the Saracenic missionary, who good naturedly 
permitted those anti-Mohammedan back-sliders, or recusants, to 
'compound (always in cash) for sins they were inclined to, by 
damning those they had no mind to']." 

Telagaguin, their king, was grandsire of Aboo-Bekr-ebn-Omar, 
who commanded the Elmoravidian empire. His successor Tiloutan 
conquered the Soudan, "marching surrounded by 100,000 dromedary- 
riders mounted upon Maharie of pure blood ;" and died in Hedjra 
222 = a. d. 837. Another historian says that, in the 4th century 
Hedjra, Obeyd-Allan had 100,000 'camels, and subdued 23 negro 
kings. The Lemtouna even reached the Senegal. "We know," 
comments De Slane, " that this river continued, for a long time, to 
separate the Berber from the negro race. 383 In the year 1446, when 
the Portuguese were making their first explorations of the western 
coast of Africa, the tribes of the Assanhagi [Zanaga, Sanhadja] 
inhabited the northern bank of the Senegal ; and the Yalof, or Wolof, 
that is to say, the Blacks, occupied the other. We must observe 
that ' Senegal ' is an alteration of the [Berber] word Asnaguen, or 
Zenaguen, plural of Zanag '; that is to say, the Sanhaja " — one of the 
great branches of the quinquegentani Berberi. 3 ^ 

Ebn Khaledoon continues — " As for those who remained in the 
desert, nothing has changed their manner of being, and, even to-day, 
they remain divided and disunited [as they continue now, 1000 years 
later]. * * * They [the Berber tribes] form a species of cordon along 
the frontier of the land of the Blacks, — a cordon which stretches 
itself parallely to that which the Arabs form upon the frontier of the 
two Moghrebs and of Ifrikia" i 385 — thus demarcating in his time, with 

383 See Raffenel ( Voyages dans VAfrique occidentale, comprenant V exploration du Senegal, 
&c, 1843-4, Paris, 1846), for the best description of these Senegalian nations. 

3« Otia, "Berber Tribes," p. 146:— Types, pp. 510-26. 

385 Says Ebn Khaledoon — " Because it must not be thought that the Arab nomades had 
inhabited this country in ancient times. It was only towards the middle of the 5th cen- 
tury of the Hedjra that Africa was invaded by bands of the tribes of Hillah and that of So- 
leym," — and then not further west than the Cyrenaica. No Arab settlers were [aside from 
the Saracen soldiery] in Barbary prior to this immigration, — except in the confused Ye- 
menite legends of "Tobba, an Arabian king, who gave his name to Ifrikia ; * * * * And 
the reason was because the Berber race then occupied the country, and prevented the other 
peoples to fix themselves in it." 

Now, this name Ifrikia, borrowed from the "Africa" of the Latins, possessed, like 
" Libya," a more restricted geographical extension formerly than in modern days. Indeed, 
nmong the Arabs even now, Ifrikia does not mean "Africa," but only the tract of country 
from Cape Barca to Tunis, not even so far west as Algeria. Owing to ignorance of this 
fact, and Frenchmen's poor acquaintance then with Arabic, the General who concluded the 
"Treaty of Tafna" with el-Hadj Abd-el-Qader, committed more diplomatic mistakes, in 
one line (the cause of all the troubles France had with this gallant chieftain till she cap- 

34 



530 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

the greatest perspicacity, the same relative topographical positions 
in which the indigenous Atlantic Berbers, the exotic Arabs, and the 
negro races, stand towards each other at this day. 

Perfectly clear also were this learned Arab's ethnic views about 
the distinctness of negro nations from either Berbers or Arabs. His 
"History of the kings of the negro peoples \_Soodan, i. e. the 
Blacks]' begins thus : " This portion of the human species that is 
composed of negro populations has, for dwelling-place, the countries 
of the second climate and of the first [His geography being that of 
Edreesee, who, like the Greeks, imagined that the African conti- 
nent prolonged itself towards the east ; in order to form the southern 
limit of the Indian and China Seas]. * * * They occupy these terri- 
tories in all their width, from the Occident to the orient. * * * The 
negro species subdivides itself into several races, tribes, and ramifi- 
cations; of which the best known, in the last, are the Zendj (natives of 
Zanzibar and Mozambique), the Halasha (Abyssinians), and the Nouba 
(Nubians)." He describes some nineteen peoples of the black race; 
and relates two curious facts showing the danger of arming negroes 
as soldiers : — 1st, how in Hedjra 252 = A. d. 866, the Zendj " slaves " 
revolted at Basra (Bassora, on the Euphrates) : — 2nd, how in Hedjra 
468, the corps of Turkish Memlooks, in the service of El-Mostansek, 
had many sanguinary engagements, at Cairo, with the negro "slave" 
troops belonging to the same Khalif. The Ketamians (i. e. Berber, 
or Moghrabee, mercenaries) ranged themselves on the side of the 
Memlooks; and, in one of their conflicts, 40,000 of their black adver- 
saries were slaughtered. The same troubles recurred during my 
own time in Egypt, when Mohammed Ali imagined that he could 
form a regular army of negro soldiers, imported as slaves from the 
Belad-es-Soodan along the Upper Nile. Out of some 12,000 who 

tured-him, and in time sent him to Brussa, and afterwards, where he resides now, to Da- 
mascus) than any Plenipotentiary ever perpetrated before ! Without the Arabic text it 
cannot be made very clear, but here it is from Pascal Duprat (Op. cit., pp. 291-2). The 
words run: — "el Ameer Aed-el-Qadek yi&ref hukrn Soollanat Fransa fi Afrikeeya" — sup- 
posed by the French protocol-maker to mean, " le Prince Abd-el-Kader reconnait le gou- 
vernement du Eoi des Francais en Afrique." Nothing of the kind ! The astute Shemite 
overreached the Dragoman (interpreter) in the two main points, — 1st, by getting himself 
recognized as an Ameer, prince, when he was previously but a mere hadjee, pilgrim to 
Mecca ; and 2nd, by recognizing French sovereignty, not in Algeria at all, but away to 
the eastward (where neither party had any rights) in Tunis, Tripoli, &c. ! This is the 
literal sense — "the prince Abd-el-Qader knows the government of a king of France in 
Afrikeeya /" 

Russia for a century, France for twenty-five years, England for some twenty-five months, 
and the United States Executive not even yet — have comprehended that diplomatists ought 
to be at least acquainted with the vernacular of those countries to which, at enormous cost, 
and frequent inutility, they are commissioned. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 5dl 

were drilled in Upper Egypt, 1823-5, all those who did not die of 
consumption before the expeditions 386 sailed to the Morea (1824-5), 

386 " Haud obliviscendum " by his first-born is all that need here accompany reference to my 
Father, — who unostentatiously manumitted, at Alexandria, every one of our slaves, between 
the years 1821 and 1827. This is a fact I desire to speak upon. 

John Gliddon — born at Exeter, Devonshire, 28th February, 1784 — left England in 1811, 
was a known Mediterranean merchant at Malta for seven years ; and thence settling in 
Egypt with his family (August, 1818), became not unknown for influential position and 
generous deeds during the apogee of Mohammed Ali's career ; especially whilst holding, 
from 1832 to 1844, the honorary incumbency of the U. S; Consulship, first at Alexandria 
and subsequently at Cairo. He died at Malta-Mnneena — 3d July, 1844. 

[I say "honorary" U. S. Consul, for the especial purpose of contradicting, once and for- 
ever, one of many other falsehoods printed last summer, viz: " Our first Consul- General in 
Egypt was a Yorkshireman, who owed the station to missionary patronage. He received 
82000 a year, and was free to continue his own vocation as a merchant." 

The anonymous, though by myself unmistakeable, signature of a " Traveler " more noto- 
rious for ubiquity than for veraciousness or discretion, — taken in conjunction with the 
coincidence that his lies found utterance in a "daily" whose head manager and editorial 
principles are too vile for durable advertisement from my own pen — render it merely neces- 
sary here to record that, in the North American (Philadelphia, February 10, 1847), may be 
found a "Letter" of mine, setting forth, then as now, all relations of Gum>ox-prenomina 
with the various administrations of the United States during my lifetime, so far. Speaking 
merely as an ethnologist, I myself have only read or heard of, and never cared about, what 
executive may have happened to strut, quadrennially, over the Washingtonian platforms. 
Each of us felt proud to serve the United Slates; none of us being ever minions of a faction. 
The pending Congressional committee of investigation into "Lobby" membership (amply 
commented on in the New York Herald, Dec. 1856-Feb. 1857), absolves me from adding 
my experiences of political probity in "Uncle Sam's" domain. I will, therefore, merely 
challenge contradiction, at the United States' State Department, of these facts, viz : that 
my Father for 1 2, myself for 8, my brother William for 2, my brother-in-law Alexander Tod for 
6, and all of us during 17 years that we upheld gratuitously the honor of the flag in Egypt, 
ever received compensation, personally, in a single United States' "red cent." We have 
severally been the mere channels of payment (less than $500 a year at Alexandria, during 
perhaps 17, — and far less than another $500 per annum at Cairo during 3 years), to native 
employe's whom the State Department's " printed regulations " compelled us to maintain 
and stipend for the United States' service in that Pashalic. On the contrary, there hang on 
file, at the State Department (as mentioned in the North American aforesaid), documents to 
prove that, were equity in Congress not notoriously measured by the ratio of discounts to 
intermedia, "Uncle Sam" really owes, and ought to pay, my Father's estate something over 
$2000 at this moment, interests for 20 years exclusive, — which claim, now as formerly, I 
hereby abandon to the fate of "Amy Darden's horse."] 

We landed in Egypt before the " Emancipation Act," which has ruined the British West 
Indies, was passed ; wherefore my Father then considered it no sin to purchase, for domes- 
tication, such slaves as suited our family requirements. The first was, 1819, Falima — nurse 
to my lamented brother Charles (died suddenly of cholera at Dacca, Bengal, 27th Nov. 
1840) — a reddish-black Galla-girl, rivalling the Venus de Medicis in form and strikingly in 
face, — -but with long, soft, wavy hair, small mouth; in short, no negress. She was 
freed and married out in 1821, dying shortly after of the plague. The next were, 1822, 
Falima and Seyda, Dar-foor negresses, and a fine negro boy named Murgian (i. e. .Wargaritus, 
coral). The former two were emancipated, dowried and married out in 1823, owing to the 
departure of my mother to place three of us at school in England. The latter, after being 
taught reading and writing, baptized and vaccinated, underwent, at the age of puberty, 



532 THE M N G E N I S T S AND 

none came back (1828), except a few miserable sukkat Mies (invalided 
veterans) wbo, for a few years, lingered as bousebold guards about 
tbe hareem-door of Ibrabeem Pasba at Kasr-ed-Doobara, until tbe 
plague of 1835 (" quseque ipse miserima vidi") swept tbem off. 
together witb almost all tbe negro slaves and Nubians (Baralera), 
then in Lower Egypt. 387 During five months that (1828-9) I so- 
journed at Navarino and Modon, skeletons of some of these unfor- 
tunates, recognizable by tatters of their uniforms, frequently fell (in 
continual rides and shooting excursions) in my way, while graves 
of the remainder lay alongside the Modon road for miles. 

If the opinions of those alone qualified to decide be taken, all 
the families of Atalantic, or Gsetulian, stock are terrce-geniti. 388 

" The Berbers," says De Slane, " autochthonous people of northern 
Africa, are the same race that is now designated by the name of 
KaUles. This word, which signifies ' clan' [in Arabic, plural 

that constitutional change from intelligence and gentleness to stupid ferocity which, in 
Egypt, prevents everybody, but Turkish officials who possess soldiery, from keeping adult 
negro male slaves in households. Murgian abjured Christ and turned Muslim, became too res- 
tive for mild control, — and finally (1824), becoming infatuated with a Nizhm-jezeed regiment 
of negroes about to embark for the war in the Morea, my father gave him his liberty. He 
sailed and, like his comrades, never came back. Four more negro girls were purchased on 
my mother's return to Alexandria (1825) ; but, being absent in England myself at that 
time, I do not recollect the names of 3, and they were already free and married off on my 
return in June, 1827, — as was the fourth, Barbara, in July of the same year. Her place 
was re-filled by a Christian white slave, bought ont of compassion from the Turkish soldiery, 
in the basaar, when hundreds of Greek captives were ravished from the Morea, to become, 
in portion, rescued, through Count de St. Leger and Captain Coddrington, 1828; as, indeed, 
two others were by myself at Cairo in 1832, and sent home. Our lady's maid, Pasquala, 
free from the hour she touched my father's threshhold, married out in 1828; and thus in 
that year ended our family connection with slavery ; although a silly tourist (Dr. Holt 
Yates), hospitably entertained by my father at Alexandria in 1828-9, has fabricated for 
his book an affecting tale about the influence of an "Abyssinian slave girl" over one of my 
sisters ! 

In justice to my parents' memory I ought to state that, in common with others at that 
emancipation-period, they then renounced the further possession of slaves "for conscience' 
sake;" — sentiments in which I never have participated; because I consider it a far more 
philanthropic act (whatever "Exeter-hall" may think of it), to rescue by purchase any 
human being — especially semi-wild negroes, when their humanization is the natural conse- 
quence — from the brutal clutches of the gellilb (slave-fetcher), than either to abandon him 
or her amid the horrors of an Oriental slave-mart, or to let him or her run the risk of not 
obtaining a better master. 

" So then," as St. Paul (Ep. to the Romans, XIV, 12, — Sharpe's N. T., p. 303) has clearly 
expressed it, " each of us shall give account of himself to God ;" nor is the Father account- 
able, in this case, for a difference of ethical opinions in his son. 

387 There is a note of mine on this subject in my friend Dr. Barton's Report of the Sani- 
tary Commission of New Orleans, 1854. See also Nott's Chap. IV, p. 393, ante. 

388 For all former authorities, see Gliddon, Otia ^Egyptiaca, 1849, "Excursus on the 
origin of some of the Berber tribes of Nubia and Libya," pp. 116-46: — and Types of 
Mankind, 1854, pp. 180-1, 204-10, 510 "Ludlm," to 526. 



THE POLTGENISTS. -533 

KabciiT], has not been employed to designate the Berbers earlier 
than about three centuries. The introduction of this distorted 
meaning must probably be attributed to the Turks," 389 — who entered 
Algiers under Barbarossa at the beginning of the 16th century. 

Inasmuch as great confusion prevails yet in the minds of other- 
wise well-informed ethnographers upon Berber subjects, and my 
object being now to separate these races of the Hamitic type of 
mankind, entirely from any affinity with more austral negro nations, 
unknown to the Berbers before the introduction of camels 390 — a 
few extracts from the French "Exploration scientifique de l'Alge- 
rie" 391 are here introduced. 

The uplands and the aborigines of Berberia (true name for 
Barbary) are likened by Carette, in their geological phenomena and 
their human vicissitudes, to an Archipelago subject to rising and 
falling tides: — "the scarped islands are the mountainous masses; 
the flat islands are the Oases ; 3M the secular tides are the invasions. 
All these islands represent different groups of the same nation ; 
whereas the wave that bathes them is by turns Phoenician, Roman, 
Vandal, Greek, Arab, Turkish," — and, at this moment, French. 
All these have carried away some Berber, and left some foreign 
words. Nevertheless, the old lingua Atlantica is still recoverable ; 
at the same time (as I have elsewhere indicated) all its words of 
moral and intellectual civilization, altogether wanting in Berber, 
have been absorbed from the Arabic, — from which the Berber 
vocabulary and grammatical construction, by monogenists supposed 
to be " Syro- Arabian," is now proved to be absolutely distinct. 

Under the head of "Distinctive characteristics of the Berber 
tongue," our Author points out that the strongest difference between 
the Arabs and the Kabciil of Mt. Atlas lies in their languages — 
"c'est M surtout qui en fait deux nations distinctes." Arabic words, 
when adopted by Berbers, undergo great changes, and these people 
understand as little of an Arabic discourse as a French one; at the 
same time that it is easier for an Arab to acquire French than 

389 Op. cil., preface, p. 1. 

390 Amply confirmed, from the latest sources, by Vivien de St. Martin, " L'Exploration 
scientifique de l'Afrique centrale," Revue Contemporaine, Paris, 15th Sept. 1855, pp. 435-6. 

391 "Pendant les Annies 1840, 1841, 1842, publige par ordre du Gouvernement, et avee 
le concours d'un Commission Aeadgmique," 4to, many vols., 1848-53, Paris, Imprim^rie 
nationale (now imp^riale). My selections are made chiefly from Carette, Eludes sur la 
Kabilie proprement dite (I, pp. 13, 20-33) — Precis historique (pp. 447-62) — and Recherches 
sur VOrigine et les migrations des Principales Tribus de l'Afrique Septentrionule, et parliculiere- 
ment de V Algerie (III, pp. 13-25, 27-55, 301-6, 441, 476). 

392 Lucidly explained from the accounts of Richardson, Barth, Overweg, and Voqel, 
as regards the Tripoli tan route over the Sahara, by St. Martin, op. cit., pp. 430-6, 440-6. 



534 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Kabaylee : whilst the Kahyle mountaineer, in bringing his produce 
to market, has much more need of Arabic than an Algerian Arab 
has of Berber. 393 

"Albeit, there exist whole tribes who present the bilingual cha- 
racter. But, among such septs the principal localities almost always 
bear names of Berber origin ; which seems to announce that, upon 
these different points, the Kabail had originally possessed the soil. 
The existence of these double -languaged populations expresses, 
therefore, nothing else than the transition between the primitive 
stratum, formed out of the Kabyle element, and the alluvial stratum, 
formed out of the Arabic element. * * * 

" Two incontestable facts are the following, viz : prior even to the 
most ancient of invasions [the Pnnico-Canaanitish ?], there existed, 
along this part of the African coast, a people and an idiom differing 
from all those peoples, and from all those idioms, which were to 
succeed each other during 2000 years; and that, now-a-days, the 
last [French] invasion finds again, in this country, a people and an 
idiom different from all those which preceded it." 

The well-known "monument of Dugga" contained 7 lines in 
Phoenician, and 7 others in an unknown writing. After the French 
occupation (1830), abundant bilingual inscriptions were found, — 
sometimes Latin, at others Punic ; but ever accompanied by the 
same unintelligible characters. The Berber alphabet, observed by 
Oudnet in 1822, advanced by De Saulct in 1844, and recovered by 
Brissonnet in 1845, has aided to unfold a great fact, viz : " the 
examination of these documents leaves no doubt as to the close 
relationship that exists between the idiom of these antique inscrip- 
tions and that other idiom now being spoken from the Egyptian 
Oasis of Seewah (westwards) to the shore of the Ocean, and (south- 
wards) from the Mediterranean to the confines of the Soodan 
(negro-lands). Hence the secular filiation of the Libyan tongue has 
revealed itself, — a tongue poor and simple, of which the type has 
perpetuated itself in the present idiom of the Kabail, athwart the 
course of ages and the vicissitudes of revolutions; without any 
other parchment than the surface of desert-rocks, without any other 
means of conservation than the vis inertise of tradition ; — now known 
by the several names of Berber, CJiaweeya, or Kabyle; which 
becomes a dialect called Lar'oua in parts of the Sahara, and Shil- 
heeya on the Atlas range. 

393 For the topographical distribution of these clans, see the excellent " Carte de 
l'Algerie divisee par Tribus," by Cakette and Warniek, Paris, 1846: — also, Wilhelm 
Ober. Muller, Atlas ethno-geographique, " Les pays et les peuples * * * de la Berberie 
dans leur gtat actuel," Paris and Leipzig (Brockhaus and Avernarius). 



THE POLTGENISTS. 535 

" The different names under which this idiom presents itself are 
recognized in a common appellative, as if forming hranches of one 
and the same trunk. The word Berber comprises equally the Kabail 
of the littoral, the Chaweeya of the south-east, the Shilheeya of Mo- 
rocco, the Beni-M'zab, and the Touariks : and, in the same manner 
that, all these dialects offer but slight differences among themselves, 
leaving no doubt whatever as to their community of origin, so the 
peoples that make use of them must be regarded as the scattered 
members of one and the same family." On the Jurjura plateaux 
there is a tribe still called (beni, Arabic for "sons") Beni-Kebila; 
another on the Aures is (owlad, = " children ") Oued-Shelih, ov Shil- 
heeya; and a third, Beni-Berber : and thus, without break in the chain 
of nomenclature, we can now ascend, — in the same language, race, 
and country — from the T-Amazirg, or Amazirg-T, or " Free-men," 
name given by this people to themselves, 394 through the Mazee-eh of 
Arab authors, to the G-entes Mazicse of the Romans, — and thence, 
finally to the Maj-usj of Herodotus, in whose day they were /3ap^apoi ; 
that is to say, not barbarians etymologically, but these same old Ber- 
beroi, our "Berbers." 

From the earliest times, when they were the " Jow-country " and 
the " nme-5ow-countries " of Egyptian hieroglyphics of the XTTth 
dynasty, 22 centuries b. c, through the period when they had become 
the Misulani, Saboubares, and quinquegentani of Latin writers, these 
Berbers have ever been the same " unconquerable Moors {Mauri) ;" 
to such degree, that their highland fastnesses amid the Atlas were 
designated as " mons ferratus " by the Boman legions, and " el- 
adoowa" (the inimical) by the later Saracenic lancers — 

"(Gens) torva, ferox, procax, verbosa, rebellis." 395 

My above allusion to the familiar hieroglyphics for Libyan nations 
prompts reference to new inquiries that have just arisen as to the 
question — How far did the pharaonic Egyptians push their conquests 
into "Western Africa ? Manetho 396 says that Menes (1st dynasty, b. c. 
40 centuries) gained glory from his foreign wars ; and that under !Ne- 
cherochis (Hid dynasty), not very long after, the "Libyans were 
defeated by the Egyptians :" but, until recently, no corroborative tes- 
timonies had been suspected, even, in Barbary itself. The first dis- 
covery of such monumental analogy was made by the daring travel- 

394 Hodgson (of Savannah, Ga.), cited in Gliddon, Otia JEgyptiaca, pp. 117-29. 

395 As GtBBON somewhere says of the Armoricans : or, in the more explicit Castilian of 
a wrathy old Spanish writer, not partial to Mussulmans, Hsdo, — " Moros, Alarbes, Ca- 
bayles, y algunos Turcos, todos gente puerca, suzia, torpe, indomita, inhavil, inhumana, 
bestial ; y por tanto, tuvo por cierto razon el que da pocos anos aca acustumbro llamar a 
esta tierra Barbaria" (Pascal Duprat, Afrique Seplentrionale, 1845, p. 65, note). 

396 Text in Bcnsen, Egypt* Place, i pp. 611, 615. 



536 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

lers, Richardson, Barth, and Overweg, 397 in 1850 ; at a mountain-pass 
called Wadee Taldja, about nine days' journey after leaving Mour- 
zook, the capital of Eezzan. Here is the account, in the words of 
M. Vivien de Saint-Martin : — 

"A little before reaching the descent we have just described, at 
the bottom of the valley through which one arrives at it, our travel- 
lers made a singular discovery. They found some figures engraved 
in deep cuttings upon the face of the rock [a very Egyptian method 
of recording conquests, as at "Wadee Magara, near Mt. Sinai, by 
steles]- The ancient people of the East loved thus to sculpture, upon 
the granite, warlike or religious scenes : there exist tableaux of this 
nature in Assyria and in Media, in Phoenicia and Asia Minor. 
Those which our explorers have discovered at the entrance of the 
[Sahara] desert have a peculiar character. They form several dis- 
tinct tableaux, of which two are above all remarkable. One offers 
an allegorical scene, the other represents a scene of pastoral, life. 
In the first, one beholds two personages, one with the head of a bird, 
and the other with a bull's, both armed with buckler and bow, and 
seemingly combating for the possession of a bull : the other shows a 
group of bulls that appear descending towards a spring to slake their 
thirst. The first of these two tablets has a character altogether Egyp- 
tian ; and the ensemble of these sculptures is very superior to what 
the nomad inhabitants of the north of Africa could now execute [See 
Pulszky's Chap. II. , pp. 188-192, on " TJnartistical Eaces "]. The 
men of the neighborhood, moreover, attribute them to an unknown 
people who, they say, possessed the country long before them. 
Barth copied with care the two principal tablets, and he sent his 
drawings, accompanied with a detailed notice, to the learned Egyp- 
tologist of London, Mr. Birch ; who will doubtless make them the 
object of a serious study. According to the very competent judg- 
ment of the traveller, the sculptures of Wadee Telissareh [name of 
the place where they are found] bear in themselves the stamp of 
incontestable antiquity. One is struck, furthermore, by a character- 
istic circumstance, viz : the absence of the camel, which always holds 
nowadays the first place in the clumsy sketches [as at Mt. Sinai] 
traced, here and there, by present tribes upon other rocks in divers 
parts of the desert. It is now recognized that the camel was intro- 
duced into Africa by the first Arab conquerors of the Khalifate [this 
is not exact — say rather about the 1st century e. c], during the VLTth 
century of our era : more anciently the only caravan beasts of bur- 
then, between the maritime zone and ISTigritia, were the ox and the 

39 ' Gumprecht, Barth und Overwegs Untersuchungs-Reise nach dem Tschad-See, Berlin, 
1852; — as cited by Saint-Martin, (supra, note 390) pp. 434-5. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 537 

horse. Strabo relates (lib. xvii.) how the Maurusians [only a dialec- 
tic mutation of JPharusians, the PTyRSIM 398 of Xth Genesis], in 
order to traverse the desert, suspended water-skins under the bellies 
of their horses. Among several tribes of the Sahara, the ox is still 
used as a beast of transportation and carriage. Richardson saw a 
great number of them in a caravan that had just crossed a part of 
the Soodan." 

A sight of Earth's copy would suffice to establish whether a breath 
of Egyptian art passed over the sculpture ; but this narration is all I 
can now learn about it. Isolate iu itself, this fact scarcely attracted 
my attention before ; but here come some fresher coincidences of real 
Egyptian monuments, still further west in Barbary, that shed some 
plausibility upon these (by myself unseen) petroglyphs. An Egyp- 
tian black-granite royal statue, broken, 'tis true, beating inscriptions 
with the name of Thotmes I (XVIIth dynasty, 16th century b. a), 
has turned up at Cherchel, in Algeria ; 3 " and a Phoenico-Egyptian 
scarabaeus, brought from the same locality, is now in Paris. 400 Now, 
as the cited scholars both coincide, those monuments may have been 
carried thither either by Phoenician traders, or by later Roman dilet- 
tanti. Neither of them proves anything for pharaonic conquests in 
Africa ; but we have lived to see, in the case of Egyptian conquests 
in Assyria, such positive evidence grow out of the smallest, and, at 
first, most dubious indication, that I feel tempted to add another, 
inedited, fact (long unthought of in my portfolio) to the chain of 
posts — epoclias left aside — now existing between ancient Egypt and 
old Mauritania. 

On the 26th Dec, 1842, my revered friend, the late Hon. John 
Pickering: — a most scientific philologist — of Boston, gave me an 
impression 401 of a fragment of true Egyptian greenish-basalt stone, 
inscribed with some sixteen or eighteen pure hieroglyphical charac- 
ters (without cartouche, but broken from a statue, part of an arm 
being on its reverse, in good relievo). This was said to have been 
picked up on the ruins of Carthage, by an officer of the U. S. Navy, 
during the Tripolitan war; and brought directly to this country, 

398 Types of Mankind, pp. 518-20. 

399 Greene, Bulletin Archeologique de I 'Athenceum Francois, May, 1858, pp. 38-9. 

400 Francois Lenormant, op. oil., June, pp. 46-7. 

401 Mislaid among old papers, I have no leisure now to search for it ; hut, from an entry 
made at the time in my " Analecta iEgyptiaca," I can state that its dimensions were about, 
length 7 inches, breadth 4J, and thickness 2. The hieroglyphics, intaglio, style Saitic, are 
cut on a sort of jamb or plinth. Until production of my copy, let me terminate with a note 
made on its reception: — " If it does not go in support of the conquests of the Pharaohs in 
Barbary, it proves intercourse, at least, with Carthage" — that is, if found at Carthage, for 
which I fear all proofs are now, after so many years, obliterated. 



538 



THE MONOGENISTS AND 



where, when I saw it, the relic was in the possession of Mr. George 
Folsom, at Boston. 

From this archaeological digression, let us return to Barbaresque 
ethnography. 

In the words of Ebn Ejhaledoon, M. Carette observes — " That 
which is beyond doubt is, that, many centuries before Islamism, the 
Berbers were known in the countries they inhabit; and that they 
have always formed, with tbeir numerous ramifications, a nation 
entirely distinct from every other." Adopting for himself the only 
natural theory, that the Berbers were created for Berberia, Carette 
continues: — "Thus, it is an Arab writer, and the most judicious of 
the whole of them, that has himself done justice to all the tattle 
invented by his co-religionists, 402 and who reduces all the system of 
Berber genealogy to two facts, viz. : the biblical datum, which his 
quality of Mussulman obliged him to admit ; and the local tradition 
that he had been able to collect himself." The following tables 
specify the state of Berber actualities. 



" The Kabail lie at the north,".. 



" The Shilloohs and the Berbers f Shillouhs, 
stand at the south — the first- j 
named west, the latter east." [Berbers, 



"The Chaweeya are at the cen- 
tre." 



Tongues and Dialects. 

KtWUiea, ( Inhabit " the northern region ol 

1 the Barbaresque continent." 



Slrilheeya, "1 

t Lar'oua, 
\ Zendtcta, 



Shawefya, . 



Shillouhs. 



f Inhabit " the southern portion 
1 of the empire of Morocco." 
Inhabit the south part of Algeria, 
Tunis, Tripoli, and Saharan 
deserts. 
Inhabit the ocean coast in Cen- 
tral Morocco, the northerly 
section of the Atlas ohain, 
and, in Algeria, the zones of 
" landes" and the mountain- 
ous interior. 




Arab origin. Berber origin. Total. 
,800,000 7,500,000 12,300,000. 



In 3 centuries the true Arab population has scarcely changed. 

Population. 

XVIth century 4,650,000 

XlXth " 4,800,000 



To render more perspicuous these ethnic subdivisions of a group 
of races hitherto very imperfectly discussed by Anglo-Saxon ethno- 
logists, I append, from another good authority, long resident profes- 
sionally in military Algerian service, 403 a curious specification of their 
several characteristics. 



402 Types of Mankind, p. 512. 

403 Bertherand, Medicine et Hygiene des Arabes, Paris, 1855, p. 173. The same observer 
adds, when describing hair in the physical characteristics of these three types (p. 181) : 
"Les Arabes sont ge'ne'ralment bruns, les Saharaonis blonds ou mieux chatain-clair, les 
Kabyles chatain: quelques-unes de lenrs tribus comptent des families en tierement blondes." 
Equally good specifications are in Pascal Duprat (op. cit.) passim. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 



539 



BERTHERAND'S division of the present native inhabitants op ALGERIA. 



The " Kabttjb," 

(Correctly, Berber,) 

Inhabits the mountains (Atlas). 



The Arab, 
(Originally Asiatic,) 
Inhabits the "Tell," hillocks, and 
marshy plains. 

Lives on cereals, melons, couscous 
(flour -pellets), and little meat. 

Tends to numerous markets; pos- Owns no fondooqs ; comes above 
sesses fondooqs (farms); cultivates all to the Arab's marts, having few 
cereals himself; works at mining; 
makes honey ; traffics in fruits. 



The " Sahara vn," 
(Man of the Sahara,) 
Inhabits the Oases, and 
sandy lands of the south. 



Eats many oily cakes, and fruits. Dates and milk. 



the cereals; has varied merchan- 
dize, — coffee, sugar, soap, Ac. 

Robbery abundant. 

Occupies a country little wooded. 

Filthy; often in need of water. 



Has horses, herds of cattle, cows; 
flocks of sheep and goats. 

Dwells in tents. 



Bilioso-lymphatie ; 
women. 



large- bellied 



Agriculturist; laboring on the 
land winter and summer. 

Intelligence — very ordinary. 



Crimes abundant. 
Country full of forests. 
Has always water. 

Possesses chiefly mules. 

Resides in goorbi (mud hovels); 
hands ever in splash. 

Bilioso-sanguineous ; women tall 
and well made. 

Arboriculturist ; works during 
the fruit-harvest. 

Intelligence — applied to arts and 
industry. 



Always in motion about the 
"Tell;" has no fondooqs ; sells hi3 
dates; is generally poor. 

Above all, a plunderer. 

Has no wood except in the Oases. 

Tolerably dirty ; often in want 
of water, even for legal (Muslim) 
ablutions. 

Owns camels and horses. 



Lives in camel-hair tabernacles; 
earth-houses in the Oases. 

Bilioso-nervous; pretty women. 



Horticulturist ; gathers dates ; 
passes life in caravans. 

Great facility of conception — very 
lively imagination. 



"It is to be remarked, that the Koolooglees m [now fast running 
out], product of unions between indigenous females and the Turks 
[no longer encroaching colonists in Algeria since the Gallic occupa- 
tion], are the strongest, the most intelligent [naturally so, because, 
under the name " Turk" is included what little now remains there 
of European captives, Circassian memlooks, &c] : an important 
question as regards the fusion, — on which certainly depends the 
implantation of the French nation in Algeria." 

Inasmuch, however, as my purpose is merely to direct ethnological 
attention towards analysis of the several primitive stocks, out of 
which the present Algerian population is compounded, I need now 
only interpose a "caveat" in respect to the opinions of Dr. Berth e- 
rand, and before him of Dr. Bodichon, 405 as to the ulterior benefits, 
by both of these skilful authors supposed likely to become the 

404 In their Frenchified cognomen, philologists "will be inclined to recognize the Osmanlee- 
Turkish radical "oGLu," that is to say "son," — as in the Laz-oglus of Nubia. Pascal 
Duprat (Afrique Septentrionale, 1845, pp. 238-9), while showing that it is as often pro- 
nounced Courogli as Goulogli, derives it from the Turkish kooleh-oglu, " son of a slave:" to 
which may be added from Rozet (Regence d' Alger, 1833, II, pp. 272-92), that these Kool- 
ooglees, nevertheless, are not half-breeds between Turks and Christian white female cap- 
tives, "but children born from native Mauresque women married to Turks." 

4 °s Types of Mankind, pp. 106-7, 110, 374. 



540 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

future sequences of amalgamation between "types" so often repug- 
nant, and amid "races" not less (in zoological, geographical, and 
historical, phenomena) diverse. 

Thus then, Ebn Khaledoon recognized the same three distinct 
types of man we find about North-western Africa now, viz., the 
Berbers, the Arabs, and the negroes south of the Sahara. He demar- 
cates the Berbers as follows : 

" Now the real fact which dispenses with all hypotheses, is this : 
the Berbers are the children of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah ; 
as we have already enunciated it, when speaking of the gi*and 
divisions of the human species. Their grandfather was named 
Mazyh [the Masici of the Latins, and the Mazues of the Greeks] ; 
their brothers were the Gergesians (Aghrikeeh); the Philistines, 
children of Casluhim [here he likewise takes the Hebrew plural for 
the Shillouhs to be a man !], son' of Misraim, son of Cham, were 
their relations. * * * One must admit [he adds peremptorily] no 
other opinion than ours." 

"Wiser than some modern ethnographers, our A.rab author wholly 
rejects Berber "pretensions to Arabian origin: pretensions that I 
regard as ill-founded; because the situation of the places which 
these tribes inhabit, and an examination of the language spoken by 
them, establish sufficiently that they have nothing in common 
with the Arabs. I except only the Sanhadja and the Ketama (but 
God knows if this be true !), who, as the Arab genealogists say 
themselves, appertain to this nation, — an opinion that accords with 
my own." The Berbers apostatized from Islam twelve times : nor 
was this religion implanted among them before Tarec (a Berber 
chief, who crossed over to Gibraltar, gebel-Tarec, "hill of Tarec," a. d. 
711) went to Spain. " These chiefs bore with them a great number 
of Berber sheykhs and warriors, in order to combat the infidels. 
After the conquest of Spain, these auxiliaries fixed themselves there ; 
and, since then, the Berbers of the Moghreb have remained faithful 
to Islamism, and have lost their old habit of apostasy." A portion 
of the Berbers, previously to that, had embraced Judaism; but 
"Idrees the First, descendant of El-Hassan, son of El-Hassan 
(grandson of Mohammed), having come into the Moghreb, caused 
to disappear from this country the very last vestige of these religions 
[Christian, Jewish, and pagan], and put an end to the independence 
of these tribes. 

"We believe that we have cited a series of facts which prove that 
the Berbers have always been a people, powerful, redoubtable, brave, 
and numerous : a true people, like so many others in this world, 
such as the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Bomans. Such 



THE POLYGENISTS. 541 

was, in fact, the Berber race. * * * From the Moghreb-el-aksa 
[extremest west] as far as Tripoli ; or, to speak more exactly, as far 
as Alexandria ; and from the Roman sea [Mediterranean] as far as 
the country of the blacks, the whole of this region has been inha- 
bited by the Berber race ; and this from an epoch of which neither 
the anterior events nor even the beginning are known," — wrote Ebn 
Khaledoon, five centuries before the science of Ethnology even 
possessed a name. 

So much being settled, I proceed to indicate points of geogra- 
phical contact between the Berber and the true negro races ; ob- 
serving only, that the possession of dromedaries and camels has — 
since the 1st century b. c. as the earliest, and since the Vllth a. d. as the 
best historical date for any large scale — spread the Berber tribes in a 
semi-circle over all the northern confines of the Beldd-es-Sooddn, 
countries of the blacks. 406 

It is from the name of the tribe Aourtka that Carette, very reason- 
ably, derives the name of "Africa;" and it is also at the oases 
Ouaregla, Temacin, and Tuggurt, — grouped into one appellative, 
Ouad-Rir (Moghrabee for Owldd-Righ) — that mixture of Atlantic 
races and tongues with Arabian chiefly takes place. "High" mean- 
ing "separation;" " Ouad-Righ" signifies "the sons of the Righ" or 
of separation. 

" The Arabs come from the tribes [Bedawees] ; the Berbers pass 
as originating fi'om the soil. It is, on the other hand, easy to recog- 
nize them ; because the Arabs have the skin tanned like men of the 
white race who have sojourned long in southern countries ; whereas 
the Ruar'a, properly so called, or autochthonous inhabitants, have 
the skin nearly as black as the negroes, and some few the traits of the 
black race. Albeit, they differ still essentially from the Nigritian 
peoples ; and, in the country itself, they can never be confounded. 
I have seen many Rouar'a [new French spelling for Roudgha~] 
Berbers very much resembling the negro, and yet who would have 
considered it an insult to be confounded with the race of slaves. 
[Amalgamation with negresses explains these exceptional cases.] 
They characterize their color by no other epithet than Khamri, 
which signifies 'brown' [or reddish, always the Egyptian color for 
the Hamitic stock]. 407 

"The autochthonous population of the 'children of Righ' (sepa- 
ration) mark, therefore, the transition of the color and the features 

406 D'Escayrac de Lautcre (Le Desert el le Soudd.n, Paris, 1854) has written one of the 
best books on this subject; but, having lost my copy, I am unable to quote an enterprising 
traveller who knows those regions so well. 

407 Types of Mankind, pp. 533 : — Otia JSgy-pliacu, p. 134. 



542 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

between the white race and the black race. It is not the tint, more 
or less bronzed, of the white populations of the south of Europe : it 
is a color altogether different, and which belongs to them, — much 
nearer to black than to white. Nevertheless, they have, of the black 
race, neither the fiat nose nor the thick lips, any more than the 
woolly hair; although, however, these traits are not those of the 
white race. 

"It is an intermediary race, half-way between ; attached, at one and 
the same time, to the two extreme races to which it approximates 
and which it separates." Such, finally, is a precis of Berber ques- 
tions at the present hour; which cuts them loose, as another type of 
man, from all other races of humanity, — excepting as concerns their 
Hamitic source and their linguistic affinities, on which M. Maury 
(supra, p. 142-3) has sufficiently cleared up obscurities. In common 
with the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the American abo- 
rigines, and some others whose earliest locum tenens has not yet been 
quite so sharply trenched in ethnology, the Berbers represent an 
especial and independent group of proximate races ; being the real 
human component of what Agassiz 408 has so conclusively determined, 
in zoological distribution, as the "North African fauna" of the 
"European realm," — populations to whom the appellative Atalan- 
tidse [the root of which is certainly Berber — a name for part of Mt. 
Atlas 409 ] would, etyniologicalty, geographically, and historically, be 
appropriate for convenience of ethnic classification. 

The next step ought to take us to the basin of the Senegal, where 
this river constitutes the dividing line between these Atalantidse 
with their Arab companions, and those true negro races whose 
habitat has never voluntarily lain to the north of it. Of course, 
before the camel reached Barbary, neither the Berbers nor the Arabs 
could have traversed the Saharran wastes to hunt the negroes ; nor 
the latter have come across it northwards for the mere satisfaction 
of becoming enslaved by those superior types of man. 

To do so properly, one should begin with the first discovery of 
this river by Europeans, about the XTVth century, and trace through 
the works of Rochefort (1643), Gaby (1689), Labat (1728), Adan- 
son (1757), Golberry (1787), La Barthe (1785), Durand (1802), 
Mollien (1818), Matthews (1787), and Laing (1825), the progress 
of knowledge as regards its now varied inhabitants. Only in three 
of the above travels have I been able to do it ; but deficiencies are 

408 Types of Mankind, p. lxxviii, and "Map." 

409 See, on the probable derivation of " Antilia" (Antilles) from Atlantis, the charming 
and erndite disquisition of D'Avezac, Les lies Fanlasliques de £ Oce"an Occidental au Moyen- 
Age, Paris, 1845, p. 27. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 543 

tolerably well made up in the excellent work of Raefenel. 410 Under 
the specific designations, — each people being also subdivided into 
tribes, of Maures (Arabs), FoulaJis, Sarracolets, Bambaras, Mandingos, 
and Yoloffs — this accurate observer manifests their distinctions of 
type and character; proving, moreover, that the white man's intel- 
ligence merges into ISTigritian brutality in the same ratio that, step 
by step, one travels- south from the Sahara into negro-land ; and that 
the color of the human skin is darkened by race-character, not by 
imaginary "climate;" because, the Semitic Arab, who has been 
there about six centuries, is no blacker than his ancestors or contem- 
poraries were, or are now, in Arabia itself. 411 Luke Burke's argu- 
ment 4 ' 2 bears out my assertion ; and I have since beheld, in the 
G-alerie Anthropologique at Paris, the beautifully colored portraits of 
all the races alluded to. 

" Let lis now pass on to Africa. Here we find the negro races 
occupying some of the most torrid regions, but not exclusively. 
Arab races have been living in the midst of them for thousands of 
years, and yet they are only brown. Some of them, indeed, are 
nearly fair ; for their blood has been repeatedly mixed with that of 
northern tribes ; and, where such is the case, we find that the climate 
does no more than simply tan or freckle such parts as are generally 
exposed to the light. Still farther to the south, — farther even than 
the true region of the negroes — extend the tribes of the Gralla, who 
have of late years conquered a large portion of Abyssinia. These 
have for ages occupied the plains of Central Africa, almost under 
the equator; aud yet they are, at the utmost, brown, and many of 
them comparatively fair. But, more than this, there are nomadic 
families of the Tawrick race, who have wandered from an unknown 
period among the burning sands of the great desert itself, and still 
retain their fair complexions. They are, indeed, no more affected 
by this torrid region than most Europeans would be after a residence 
there of a few months. 

"We have already spoken, in a former chapter, of the Kabyles of 
the Auress mountains in Algiers, — one tribe of whom have not 
merely a fair and ruddy complexion, but also hair of a deep yellow. 

410 Op. cit., Atlas, colored likeness of "Maure de Se"n6gal;" — who might be well con- 
trasted with another good portrait from the Abyssinian side of Africa, " Djellab marchand 
d'esclaves du Cordofand," in the Revue de I'Orient, Paris, 1854, PI. 31. 

411 Exploration du Senegal, depuis St. Louis jusqu^A la Faleme, au deld de Bakel ; de la 
Faleme, depuis son embouchure jusqu'd. Sansandig ; des mines d'or de Kenieba, dans le Bam- 
bouk ; des pays de Galam, Bondou, el Woolli; et de Gamble, depuis Baracounda jusqu'il 
V Ocean, during 1843-4; Paris, 1846, 8vo, with folio atlas. 

412 Ethnological Journal, London, No. 2, July, 1848, — "Varieties of Complexion in the 
Human Race," p. 76-7. 



544 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Dr. Shaw, the traveller from whom we quoted, gives a still more 
decided testimony against the theory of climate, in speaking of the 
Moorish women. His words are : ' The greatest part of the Moorish 
women would he reckoned beauties even in Great Britain, as their 
children certainly have the fairest complexion of any nation whatever. 
The boys, indeed, by wearing only the tiara, are exposed so much to 
the sun that they soon acquire the swarthiness of the Arab ; but the 
girls, keeping more at home, preserve their beauty till they are 
thirty, at which time they are usually past child-bearing.' — (Travels 
in Barbary and the Levant, fol. 1738, p. 120.) Here we perceive the 
true effects of climate on the fair races : a temporary darkening of 
the parts exposed to the sun, the children of people so darkened 
born perfectly fair! Who can tell the number of ages that the 
Moors have inhabited the north of Africa ? "Who can say that their 
present region is not their original country ? And yet here they are 
still, a perfectly fair race. 

" Southern Africa also presents us with many striking illustrations 
of the fallacy of the theory of climate. We shall content ourselves 
with citing two of the most remarkable, viz., those presented by the 
physical peculiarities of the Hottentots and Bosjesmans. These two 
races have been considered as one ; but only by those who believe 
in the great modifying power of circumstances. They are evidently 
distinct. The Bosjesmans are pigmies; the Hottentots, where pure, 
tall and large. Persons of intermediate stature are, of course, met 
with; because two races so much alike in most respects, residing 
near each other, must necessarily have intermarried in the course of 
ages ; but there is no conceivable reason why, except as distinct 
races, the one should be active, restless, comparatively brave, and 
of a stature seldom exceeding four feet nine inches, while the other 
is tall, large, timid, and exceedingly sluggish. In most other respects 
their organization is similar ; and they differ from all other portions 
of mankind in the nature of the hair and in two remarkable pecu- 
liarities in the female structure. They are in the midst of races 
widely differing from them, — negroes on the one hand and Caffres 
on the other ; both black, while the Hottentots and Bosjesmans are 
simply of a light yellowish brown. How can these facts be accounted 
for except as differences of race ?" 

A view of some curious analogies, a propos of the Gaboon river- 
land, may here be given. 

The chart (further on), illustrative of the distribution of the simiadse 
in their relation to that of some inferior types of man, with the text 
accompanying, suggests a few hints to ethnographers. Among them 



THE POLTGENISTS. 545 

is the fact, that the highest living species of Monkeys occupy pre- 
cisely those zoological provinces where nourish the lowest races of 
mankind. 

It is well known, that all negroes found in Algeria (where their 
lives are also curtailed, as in Egypt, by an uncongenial climate), are 
brought over the Sahara, by the inland caravan-trade, chiefly from 
the neighborhood of the Niger and Senegal rivers. This shall be 
made evident in elucidating the Saharran fauna of the African realm 
on our Tableau. From the Senegal, G-ambian, Joliba, and other 
streams, as well as from around Lake Tchad and its affluents, there 
is, and has been, ever since the Arabian camel was introduced; about 
the 1st century b. c., 4]3 'a ceaseless flow of nigritian captives to the 

413 Desmoulins, op. cit., Memoire sur la Patrie du Chameau a line Basse, et sur Vepoque de 
son introduction en Afrique; pp. 359-88: — I am acquainted with the objections raised by 
Quatremere (Memoires de VAcad. Roy. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, XV., Paris, 1845; pp. 
393-5. — ) ; but Egyptological reasons, by him disregarded, lead me to deem them incon- 
clusive. 

A word here about "Camels." Mention was made (Types of Mankind, p. 729, note 610), 
of a MS. memoir of my own, entitled "Remarks on the introduction of Camels and Drome- 
daries, for Army-Transportation, Carriage of Mails, and Military Field-service, into the 
States and Territories lying south and west of the Mississippi, between the Atlantic and 
Pacific coasts — presented to the War-Department, Washington, Oct. 1851 :" — and dedicated 
to the Hon. Jeff. Davis, then U. S. Senator, — who had previously, at my instigation (Nat. 
Intelligencer, Wash., D. C, 27 March, 1851), introduced a camel-bill into Congress. 

It is known to everybody in this country that the United States Transport " Supply" has 
already made two trips, one to Alexandria, and the other to Smyrna, and brought over to 
Texas some 80 of these animals, in good condition. The undertaking could not fail to be 
successful, — 1st, because the ship was commanded by my old friend (welcomed " chez moi" 
at Cairo as far back as 1835), Lieut. David Porter, U. S. N. ; — and 2d, because the War 
Department has merely carried out (with but one solitary exception) every detail — down to the 
most minute — of my "Remarks" aforesaid, in regard to the importation of these animals. 

Following the maxim — " je reprends ma propri^te' oil je la trouve" — I claim here the credit 
of chalking out the lines upon which these Camels reached America ; confident that if (and 
I hardly think such contingency possible after the instruction the party in charge had from 
myself), there should be any failure in developing the unbounded utility of these quadrupeds 
after their landing, such eventuality can proceed solely through United States' official mis- 
management. 

Meanwhile, I presume my above-mentioned MS. has become mislaid at the War Depart- 
ment; because I see that Mr. Marsh, in his very nice little work (Boston, 1856), on the 
" Camel," whilst gratefully acknowledging the various documents on the subject lent him 
by the War Department, with honorable mention of the Authors of each paper, has nowhere 
alluded, either to myself (who planned the whole affair for them in writing, 1851-6), or to 
my said "Remarks." 

Now, whether my MS. (bound in red morocco, too) be or be not in existence at the War 
Department, it so happens that, knowing perfectly well the sort of principles current at 
Washington — -District Columbia, — I had taken 3 precautions to ensure preservation of my 
ideas therein ; 1st, by having a fac-simile copy made by the hands of a third party before 
transmitting the original from Pittsburg, Pa., to the Department; 2d, by securing suflicient 
collateral evidence of my connection with that Institution from first to last ; and 3d, by 
preserving, in a patent Salamander safe, my MS. copy, with every scrap of correspondence 

35 



546 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

slave-marts of Timboctoo, Mourzook, and other oases ; whence they 
become distributed, by Touarik and Arab gellabs, throughout Maroc- 
chine, Algerian, Tunisian and Tripolitan, territories. Now, the 
various negro populations of the above-named rivers are by no means 
the most austral nations represented in these cities' local slave-markets ; 
because such distinct stations are, in their turn, re-filled by caravans 
from the interior; whose " exploitation" of nigritian prisoners stretches 
backwards to Ashantee, Benin, Dahomey, Adamoua, &c. : whither 
again converge endless radiations of still more inland slaves, whose 
hunted-grounds reach southwards to an unknown extent, but cer- 
tainly as far as Congo. The consequence is, that in Algeria, as at 
Cairo, numberless varieties of negroes, from many countries, are 
represented, in human slave-basaars. 

Among these, a peculiar type is frequently seen even now, but was 
far more abundant prior to the abolition of that piratical Deyship, by 
the French in 1830. Of this race I clearly remember two huge and 
ferocious specimens working about Mohammed Ali's arsenal at 
Alexandria for a long time, between 1827 and 1835; when I think 
they must have succumbed to the great plague of the latter year. They 
had been landed from the crews of an Algerine frigate and a corvette 
that, sent as quota to the Pasha's squadrons against the Greeks, 
rotted their hulks out in our western harbor, after the fall of theii 
quondam owner at Algiers. Witness for years, and once assistant 
retributor, of the brutality of these two Algerine negroes, their phy- 
siognomies are ineffaceable from my memory ; being besides totallj 
distinct from any negro race brought down the Mle to Cairo. 

It was, therefore, with satisfaction that I lately recognized the fea- 
tures of my old acquaintances, in two plates, wholly distinct in ori- 
gin, representing the same type abiding in French Algeria : with the 
only difference that the men I knew were almost black in color. 

The profile of one is fac-simile-ed in No. 26 of our Tableau under 
the name of " Saharran-negro ;" partly because this individual, or his 
parents, must have been brought across the great desert, and partly 

between myself and others, — from Dec. 1850, at Philadelphia, down to June 1856, at Paris — 
relative to this grand experiment of naturalizing the Arabian camel, amidst its homogeneous 
climatic and other conditions, in the south-western States and Territories of the United 
States on this continent. 

I hope soon to have a little more leisure than just at this moment ; when it will afford me 
great pleasure, the public much entertainment, and the Honorable Mr. Marsh peculiar 
gratification, to show how easy it was to " see through a millstone, after somebody had made 
a hole in it," as concerns the successful importation of these Camels — no less than this 
gentleman's astounding mesmeric clairvoyance in guessing at every fact and idea, contained 
in that fac-simile copy of my "Remarks" aforesaid, during the period that it lay locked 
up in a patent Salamander safe. Philadelphia, 10th February, 1857. — G. R. G., "(for- 
merly) United States Consul at Cairo." 



THE FOLTGENISTS. 547 

because numerous historical analogies lead me to infer, that it is 
towards Senegal that his typical family should be sought for. Its 
original colored drawing, much larger in size, being one of about 
forty beautifully-executed portraits taken on the spot by the Commis- 
sion scientifique d' Alger ie, is now suspended in the Gf-alerie Anlhropo- 
logique of the Parisian Museum. Published by the Chief of that ex- 
pedition, the late Bory de Saint- Vincent, 414 my copy has been traced 
upon stone directly from Bory de St. Vincent's plate, in my posses- 
sion. He thus briefly describes this head's history : — 

"ISTo. III., finally, is the Ethiopian type. This head was that of 
a bandit native of the Soodiin [negro-land], killed in the Sahel [At- 
lantic slopes towards the Sahara], where one of the sabre-cuts with 
which he was smitten shows, over the left parietal, how much more 
considerable the thickness of the bones of the cranium is in negroes 
than in other men. * * * 

"In disposing," proceeds our author, "the bony cases [skulls] that 
I present to the Academy, upon the same plane one after another, 
we are first struck by the manner in which, on starting from the At- 
lantic type [or Berber, see a semplar gradation in our Tableau, ~Ho. 
22], wherein the facial angle is almost a right one, the gradual pro- 
minence of the upper jaw becomes considerable. This elongation is 
such in the Ethiopian, that the resemblance of his skeleton to that 
of the large monkeys becomes striking [ubi supra'] : at the base of a 
sufficiently-high, but laterally compressed frontal region, the supra- 
orbital ridges project almost as considerably as those of a middle- 
aged Orang. Other bony prominences, not less marked, crown the 
temporal region at the attachments of the temporal muscles ; a very 
pronounced depression exists at the root of the nose, of which the 
bones proper are also the shortest, and so disposed forwards that 
their situation becomes nearly horizontal. Certain airs of animality 
result from this osteological ensemble ; and, the facial traits not being 
less strange, the breadth of the nose with its widely-open wings, and 
the prodigious thickness of the lips, whose lower one seems to be 
quasi-pendent, impress upon this Ethiopian's profile the aspect of a 
sort of muzzle." 

Following this famed anthropologist's suggestion, I now submit, 
to the reader's inspection, four wood-cuts (A, B, C, D, on next page). 

Few remarks suffice to establish authenticity." The palpable ana- 

414 Sur V Anthropologic de VAfrique Francaise (read at the Academic des Sciences, 30 
June, 1845) — extract from the Mac/asm de Zoologie, d'Analomie compare'e et de PaUontologie ; 
Paris, Oct. 1845; pp. 13-4; and Plate Mammiferes, PI. 61, figs. "No. III. Type Ethio- 
picn." Bory de St. Vincent is the well-known polygenist; author of V Homme (Homo). 
Essai zoologique sur le Genre Ilumain ; of which I am only acquainted with the 2d odition; 
Paris, 2 toIs. 18mo., 1827. 



548 



TEE MONOGENISTS AND 



logies and dissimilitudes, between an inferior type of mankind and a 
superior type of monkey, require no comment. 

A. B. 




Three-quarter view of another Algerine negr< 
" Biskree." 415 



Front view of our Saharran-negro. Com- 
pare his tinted profile in No. 26 of our 
" Ethnographic Tableau," — from B. de 
St. V.'s plate. 

D. 




Gorilla- Gina, Is. Geoff. Troglodytes- Tshego, — 
Duv. (Three-quarter yiew.) 416 



Same animal. 
(Front view. ) 



415 Galerie Eoyale de Costumes, folio, colored, Paris (Aubert & C ie ., Place de la Bourse, 
No. 29) ; "Porteur a Alger," PI. 15. 

416 Annales des Sciences Naturclles, 3 m « Eerie, Zoologie, Paris, 1851 ; xvi. PI. VII., figs. 1, 
3; and pp. 154-92. — Cf. also. Duveknot, Comples rendus de I'Acad. des Sciences, 1853; 
xsxvi. pp. 924-36. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 549 

Fig. B — as above stated, is the front view of the " Saharran Negro " 
of whom our Tableau, No. 26, gives the profile. The color of the 
original is a livid tawny black, chiefly due to drainage of blood after 
decapitation ; for it was drawn on the field of the skirmish. By com- 
parison with the profile, its Simian expression will be the better per- 
ceived. 

Fig. A — has.no history, beyond the reference that his name was 
"Biskry," and that he happened to be a "Porter at Algiers :" but 
nomenclature identifies the route by which he, or his progenitors, 
reached A lgeria, in the Oasis of Biskra.™ I infer that this was his 
nick-name (soubriquet) ; because, in Arabic as in Hebrew, 418 the 
suffix ye, ee (iod), to a geographical appellative indicates the " being 
of," or, "belonging to" a locality; so that our Biskree, from Biskra, 
means in English the Biskr-ian. 

Hence we learn the road of his transit over the Sahara. In the 
original plate the color of his skin is a blackish-red brown ; and we 
know that almost every shade, from a dirty yellow to a full ebony, is 
to be met with among aborigines of Africa — on which hereinafter. 
I have purposely chosen this sample, which is wholly independent 
of Bory de St. Vincent's, to substantiate the existence of such par- 
ticular types in North-western Africa. Thirty-three years have 
passed since, as a boy, I saw the bronze " Mori " (Moors) in the Ar- 
senal of Leghorn. I stand corrected if this man is not one of the 
same types. 

Figs. C and D — are front and profile heads of the specimen, as yet 
unique, of a perfect adult Gorilla ; which, preserved in spirits, was 
sent to the Parisian Museum d'ffistoire Naturelle, in 1852, from the 
Gaboon River, by Dr. Franquet. 

If hypercriticism 419 should object to renewed selection of extreme** 1 

m Prisse d'Avennes's Revue Orimtale el Algerienne, Paris, 8vo., 1852; i. — Pkax, "Com- 
munications entre l'Algerie et le Senegal, " pp. 275-95, and Map: — also Campmas, "Oasis 
de Biskra ;" pp. 296-303. 

418 Types of Mankind, pp. 531-2. 

419 The London Athenaeum (June 17, 1854), in reviewing our last work, did cot like the 
contrasts afforded by placing the Apollo Belvidere, an African negro, and a Chimpanzee, 
on the same plate. It was shown in the next number (Athenceum, June 24), that they were 
copied from the accurate designs of an English artist — "William Harvey, the pupil of Be- 
wick." 

420 Luke Bukke (Ethnological Journal, London, New Series, No. 1, Jan. 1854; p. 88) 
happily says — "The best means of treating man properly is to treat him as we do the most 
clearly-defined portions of general zoology. Should we not, for instance, better promote 
our knowledge of the dog, by carefully noting the most aberrant of his forms, than by any 
selection of average skulls ? And why should it not be so with man also ? We would, 
therefore, take the liberty of suggesting to all engaged in pursuits of this kind, that the 
best mode of consulting the interests of science is to think less of averages and more of 
individualities." 



550 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

samples for proper illustration of a zoological subject; and perad- 
venture exclaim that a decollated negro, upon whose features are 
stamped the last agonies of violent death, is not a fit exponent of the 
type I call " Saharran-negro " until its natural province be made 
known, my rejoinder would be simply this: — our Biskreean, from 
the same regions and in " species " identical, seems to have been in 
full blossom when his portrait was taken at Algiers ; and, on the 
other hand, I claim that some allowance of similar kind ought, in 
fairness, to be made in behalf of 'a poor homicided Cforilla, whose 
facial expression alcohol has doubtless distorted and contracted. 
Surgeons and physicians, when elaborating facts in their medical 
publications, habitually leave aside "sentiment" as merely obstruc- 
tive to knowledge. It is time, I think, that ethnographers should 
imitate such example. 

The disquisition accompanying our Monkey-chart explains some 
geographical coincidences between species of the simiadse and some 
races of mankind ; but, by way of anticipation, it is remarkable that 
this type of anthropomorphous apes actually dwells in Africa not a 
thousand miles from the region inhabited by the above type of negro. 

But there are still lower forms of the negro type precisely in those 
regions around the Bight of Benin where the two highest species of 
African anthropoidse, viz., the G-orilla and the Chimpanzee, overlap 
each other in geographical distribution. The best of authorities on 
the latter subject, Prof. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard University, 421 
wrote long ago : 

"Whilst it is thus easy to demonstrate the wide separation be- 
tween the anthropoid and the human races, to assign a true position 
to the former among themselves is a more difficult task. Mr. Owen, 
in his earlier memoir, regarded the T. niger as making the nearest 
approach to man; but the more recently discovered T. gorilla, he is 
now induced to believe, approaches still nearer ; and regards it as 
'the most anthropoid of the known brutes.' This inference is derived 
from the study of the crania alone, without any reference to the rest 
of the skeleton. 

"After a careful examination of the memoir just referred to, I am 
forced to the conclusion that the preponderance of evidence is un- 
equivocally opposed to the opinion there recorded ; and, after placing 
side by side the different anatomical peculiarities of the two species, 
there seems to be no alternative but to regard the chimpanzee as 
holding the highest place in the brute creation." 

421 Crania of the Euge-ena (Troglodytes gorilla, Savage) from Gaboon, Africa, read before 
the Boston Society of Natural History, Oct. 3, 1849; — from the American Journal of Science 
and Arts, 2d series, vol. ix ; p. 9. 



THE P0LT6ENISTS. 551 

On the other hand, Prof. Agassiz remarked, in our former work'; 422 
"The chimpanzee and gorilla do not differ more one from the other 
than the Mandingo and the Guinea negro : they together do not 
differ more from the orang than the Malay or white man differs from 
the negro:" — and again, in the present [" see Pref. Rem."] : "A 
comparison of the full and beautifully illustrated descriptions which 
Owen has published, of the skeleton and especially of the skulls of 
these species of orangs, with the descriptions and illustrations of 
the different races of man, to be found in almost every work on this 
subject, shows that the orangs differ from one another in the same 
manner as the races of men do ; so much so that, if these orangs are 
different species, the different races of men which inhabit the same 
countries, the Malays and the Negrillos, must be considered also as 
distinct species." 

For evidence that, in the same west-African localities, there exist 
inferior grades of negroes, lower than anywhere else known, there 
is an unexceptionable and recent authority, in a good ethnologist, 
the missionaiy Wilson, 423 who describes these "degenerate branches" 
— a sort of negro-gypsies — with great unction and precision. 

But we possess still later information, and from a daring and 
reliable naturalist, M. Duchaillu, — deservedly lauded in Dr. Meigs's 
chapter [supra, p. 324, note 243]. I was present at that meeting of 
our Academy, and fortunate enough to hear Mr. Cassin read Du- 
chaillu's long and very matter-of-fact report. Au interesting discus- 
sion then arose, opened by some critical comments of Mr. Parker 
Foulke, among the members present ; whence two facts were elicited : 
1st, that, near Cape Lopez, Duchaillu had shot both Gorilla and 
Chimpanzee, the skins, &c, of which are on their way to the Aca- 
demy; and, 2d, that he had just visited (his letter bears date Oct., 
1856), up the Muni river, north of the Gaboon, two extraordinary 
negro-tribes, viz., the Pauein (whom Wilson calls the "Pangwee" — ■ 
different from the M'pongwee) and the Oshebo, whose habitats are 
divided by that stream. As Mr. Foulke observed, they are the first 
historical instance of cannibalism elevated into marketing traffic ; 
for the Pauein do not eat their own dead, but exchange them, across 
this river, for the carcases of the Oshebo! M. Duchaillu quietly 
observes that he could n't eat meat in that country. 

422 Types of Mankind, p. lxxv. 

123 Anonymous, "Ethnographic View of Western Africa," a pamphlet of 34 pages, New 
York, 1856 ; p. 23. It is from Dr. Meigs's chapter (supra, p. 326) that I learn the name 
of this clever writer; who inadvertently quotes, as if he had found, in the excellent works 
of Mr. W. B. Hodgson, what he can find nowhere else than in my Olia JEgypliaca, and in 
onr Types of Mankind. 



552 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Now, whilst these lowest tribes of negro man-eaters dwell in the 
same zoological province as the black Gorillas and Chimpanzees, is it, 
I would ask, through fortuitous accident that, where the red orangs 
of the East Indian Archipelago roam the jungle, there sbould exist 
a cannibalism almost parallel, although not mercantile, — as shown 
in the reddish B'hattas, &c, who, some years ago, devoured two 
English missionaries, amongst other instances ? 

It is to be remarked, however, tbat, as voyagers observe, can- 
nibalism in Polynesia, and also in New Zealand, 424 does not seem so 
much to have been an instinctive craving among Maori nations, as 
to have gradually grown into a habit of luxurious feeding among 
nautical wanderers who, in their vicissitudes of navigation, from 
island to island, were often compelled to eat each other. 435 

It is time to arrest the course of these remarks; the object of 
which chiefly is, to eliminate from further discussion some objections 
that the unavoidable brevity of the ensuing sections will compel me 
to pass by unnoticed. Confined within some 200 pages, my contri- 
bution to the present volume must fall very far short of the materials 
collected for its elaboration. I apprehend, nevertheless, that readers 
of the preceding commentary are now prepared for the assertion 
that a current phrase, "the unity of tbe human species," if it possess 
any real meaning, leaves us in utter darkness as to the scientific 
question of mankind's lineal derivation from a single pair ; or as to 
its counter theory, the plurality of origin from many pairs, situate 
in different geographical centres, and possibly formed at different 
epochas of creation or of evolution. Chronology we have found to 
be a "broken reed" for any event anterior, say, to the 15th century 
b. c. : so that there exists no positive limit, determinable by ciphers, 
to human antiquity upon earth, save such as palaeontology — a science 
commenced by Lister in England, Blumenbach in Germany, and 
founded on true principles by Cuvier in France — may in the future 
discover. To talk of years, or hundreds of them, in the actual state 

*" "Ces abominable coquins!"— as the gallant Capitaine Laplace (Voyage aulour du 
Monde, &c, sur la corvette la "Favorite" 1830-2, Paris, 8vo, text, 1835, IV, pp. 8-51) 
indignantly exclaims, after witnessing the morality of their women and the human repasts 
of the men. The same pages give an excellent idea, too, of the missionaries in that remote 
island. 

425 "It will probably be found, on further examination, however, that, with the exception 
of the disgusting practice of cannibalism, the black color, with crisped hair, common to all, 
there are as many points of difference between the [Negrillos] different islanders of the 
group, as between any two races in the Pacific," says Ekskine (Journal of a Cruise, &c, in 
R. M. S. " Havannah," London, 8vo, 1853, p. 16). He confirms also Laplace on mission- 
aries; as does Du Petit Thcars ( Voy. autour du Monde, &c, frigate la "Venus," 1836-9, 
Paris, 8vo, text, 1843; I, pp 317-36; II, p. 373; TV, pp. 70-88); not to mention Mojren- 
hout (Isles du Grand Ocean, Paris, 8vo, 1837; I, pp. 216-357; II, pp. 283-322, 515). 



THE POLYGENISTS. 553 

of this science, is simply absurd, — a mere illustration of what Greg 426 
properly stigmatizes as "the humiliating subterfuges resorted to, 
by men of science, to show that their discoveries are not at variance 
with any text of Scripture." Other conclusions the reader will draw 
for himself. 

On the majority of these problems my own opinions assumed 
definite shape between 1845 and 1850; but, inasmuch as it is custo- 
mary for authors to utter, at some time or other, their individual 
"profession of faith," I may here be permitted to recall, as mine, 
some passages of the third lecture on "Egyptian Archaeology," de- 
livered 427 in my last course at this city, more than six years ago. 
They have since remained inedited; and the only value I attach to 
them accrues from the circumstance that, written at the suggestion 
of my honored friend the late Samuel George Morton, they have 
become to me a memento of past interchanges of thought with one 
of the noblest of men. 

" Creative Power has veiled, equally, from human ken the origin 
" of man and his end. If any argument were required to impress 
"upon my mind the beneficence of the Creator towards his crea- 
" tures 428 — -any fact, that in the brain of a human being of cultivated 
"intelligence, and which, whispered to each of us in the 'still, small 
" voice ' of conscience, proves the goodness of Deity, not merely to 
" mankind, but to all animate substances created by his will, — it is, 
" that, like every other animal, Man knows not the hour of his birth 
" or of his death ; can discover, by no process of retrospective ratio- 
's cination, the moment when he entered this life ; nor ascertain, by 
" anticipation, the precise instant when he is to depart from it. 

" An example will illustrate my meaning : 

" Leaving aside, in this question, those traditionary legends of our 
"respective infancies, which, in themselves, may be true — although 
"received, as inevitably they must be, on the "ipse dixit" of others, 
"to us these accounts of the cradle and nursery are not certain,*® — 
" each individual's memory can carry his personal history back to the 

426 Creed of Christendom, pp. 2, 45-51. 

i 2 ' Philadelphia, Chinese Museum, 6th January, 1851: — "North American and Gazette," 
Jan. 7. 

428 Beyond all works, that of my venerable friend, M. Hercule Straus-Durckheim 
{Theologie de la Nature, Paris, 3 vols. 8vo, 1852) contains the ablest demonstration of Crea- 
tive wisdom and benevolence through the science of comparative physiology, in which the 
author of " Anatomie descriptive and comparative du Chat," is known by naturalists to be 
an unsurpassed adept. 

429 Vico, Scienza Nuova (translated by " PAuteur de l'Essai sur la formation du Dogme 
Catholique," Paris, 12mo, 1844; pp. 41-4) — Axioms IX-XVI; on the distinction between 
the " true," and the "certain." 



554 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

"period when logical inductions, from facts aquired by himself in 
" maturity, can determine that he must have been about four or five 
" years old. Some persons' memories can recede farther, and recol- 
" lect events coetaneous with their second year of infancy. Beyond 
" that, all is blank to personal reminiscence. Wow, it is from this 
" fact — a commonplace one, if you please — that Creative benevolence 
" resiles as a sequence : because, human science might possibly attain 
" to such perfection (arguing her future triumphs from her present 
" conquests over the past), that, could an individual determine the 
" precise instant when his body had been quickened by the spark of 
" life, he might, as a chance-like possibility, be able to deduce from 
"it also, beforehand, the moment of his decease. Hope of life in this 
" world, beyond such given point, being thereby extinguished in his 
"breast, every stimulus to exertion, moral or intellectual, would 
" vanish with it ; and such man would rapidly sink, through mere 
" physical indulgences, to the level of the brute. That misshapen 
"precursor of astronomical science, Astrology, — which, originating 
" at least 2500 years ago 430 in Chaldaic Magianism, sat, for centuries, 
" like a nightmare upon the torpid intelligence of our own ' middle 
"ages' — really dared, with Promethean boldness, to cast man's 
" horoscope, and to determine the instants of his nativity and death, 
" through deceptive manipulations of an astrolabe : but this hoary 
"imposture, with its Egyptian sister, Alchemy, and their cousin 
" Vaticination, deludes now-a-days no educated and sane mind. 431 

" Why do I weary your intelligence with such truisms ? Simply, 
" in order to posite before it one syllogistic deduction, as an incontro- 
" vertible point of departure in strictly-archreological inquiries into 
" human origines, viz : that, inasmuch as the beneficent Creator has 
" shrouded, from each individual man, knowledge of his personal 
" beginning and his end ; and, as all Nations are but aggregations of 
" individuals, it is, ergo, absolutely impossible to fix, chronologically 
" speaking, the eras at which primeval Nations, whose existence is 
" antecedent to the human art of writing, severally were born. 

" Geology, offspring of the XTXth century, can define on the 
"rocky calendar of the earth's revolutions, the particular stratum 
" when humanity was not : but, the intervals of solar time existing 
" between such stratification and our erroneous year 432 Anno Domini 

430 De Rouge, "Noms 6gyptiennes des Planetes," Bulletin Archeologique de VAlhenceum 
Francais, Mars, 1850 — shows how the system was developed in Demotic times. 

431 " The science of the Aruspices was so eminently absurd, that Cato, the Censor, used 
to say he wondered how one Aruspes could look at another without laughing out:"-^ 
McCulloh, Impartial Exposition of the Evidences and Doctrines of the Christian Religion, 
Baltimore, 8vo, 1836 ; p. 65. 

132 Types of Mankind, pp. 665-7 ; and supra, p. 479. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 555 

1851, cannot be expressed by arithmetic; is attainable through no 
known rule of geometry ; and, to the time-measurer, presents no 
element beyond incalculable and incomprehensible cycles of gloom 
— the depths of which, like those of the ocean, his plummet can- 
not fathom. 

" What ultimate goal remains, then, for our aspirations in pursuit 
of knowledge about 'the beginning of all things,' when the initial 
point — modern, in contrast with invertebrata, or more inform ves- 
tiges of Nature's incipient handicraft, discerned in the ' old red 
sandstone' — of mankind's first appearance on this planet lies 
beyond the reach of our contemporaries' solution ; and, according 
to my view, of human mental capability, past, present, or to come? 
What can the Historian hope to achieve through disinterment, 
from the sepulchre of by-gone centuries, of such fragments of hu- 
manity's infantine life as, preserved fortuitously down to our time, 
archaeology now collects for his examination ? 

" In the minds of many colleagues in Egyptology, whose philoso- 
phical results it becomes my province to lay before you ; if we will 
consent to figure to imagination's eye the aggregate histories of the 
earth's nations as if these were embodied pictorially into one man 
— that is, were we to personify humanity in general by one indivi- 
dual in particular, — the world's history, like the lifetime of a per- 
son, will classify itself naturally into something like the following 
order : presupposing always that we symbolize our idea of the pend- 
ing XlXth century, by the figure of a man in the prime of life, fast 
approaching the acme of physical, mental, and moral, perfection — 
say, with the old physicians, that we take him at his 'grand cli- 
macteric ' 433 of five times seven years, the thirty-fifth of his age. 

" Inquiring next of our symbolic man his individual history, we 
find that, without effort, his memory will tabulate backwards the 
events of his manhood, twelvemonth by twelvemonth, for fourteen 
years, to his traditionary twenty-first birthday ; when he attained 
legal rights among his fellows. He will equally well narrate the 
incidents of the preceding seven years, during which he had served 
apprenticeship, finished a collegiate education, or otherwise deve- 
loped, in this interval of adolescence, the faculties allotted to his 
share : but he will candidly acknowledge how little he then knew 
of the great world he was preparing for, and how completely sub- 
sequent initiation into the higher mysteries of manly life had altered 
the preconceptions of his noviciate. Seven years still farther back, 
from the fourteenth of his age, his recollections will carry him ; and 

433 Floubens, Long evile (vide supra, note 162): — Lucas, Heredilc, I, pp. 254-84. 



556 THE MONOGEKISTS AND 

" schoolboy-days are vividly stamped upon the leaflets of memory. 
"Youth, however, merges insensibly into childhood; but beyond his 
" seventh year even the child's remembrance fades away into infancy. 

" Here and there some circumstance, more or less important in his 
" awakening history, flashes like a meteor, or flits like an ignis fatuus, 
" across his mind. Of its positive occurrence he is morally sure ; of 
" its date in relation to his own age at the time, onwards perhaps 
" from his third birthday, he knows nothing ; except what he may 
" attain through inductive reasoning guided by the reports of others 
" — his own self-accredited reminiscence of the event being more fre- 
" quently than not, but the reflex of what may have been told him, 
"in after life, by witnesses or logopceists. 434 His cradle-hours ante- 
" date his own memory : their incidents he has gathered from domes- 
" tic traditions, or infers them by later observation of nursery-eco- 
" nomy with other babies. Ask him now — ' When were you born?' 
" Our man knows not. He accepts his first birthday upon faith, ' the 
"evidence of things unseen ;' 435 its epoch he receives upon hearsay. 
" The accounts he has heard of his infantile life, from nativity to his 
" second or third year, may be true enough ; but, to himself, they are 
" anything rather than certainties. 

" Now, ■ the life of nations is long, and their traditions are liable 
" to alteration ; but that which memory is to individual man, history 
"is to mankind in general.' 436 Viewing our Cosmic man, then, as 
" the symbol of the history of all humanity ; and sweeping our tele- 
" scopes over the world's monumental and documentary chronicles 
"extant at this day; at what age of humanity's life do the petro- 
" gtyp QS 0J? the oldest historical nation, the Egyptians, first present 
"themselves to the archaeologist? — that is, was the earliest known 
"civilization of the Nile's denizens, as now attested by the most 
" ancient stone-records at Memphis, infantile, puerile, adolescent, or 
"adult? At which of the five stages of seven years, mystically 
" assumed by the old philosophers to be preliminaries of their ' great 
"climacteric,' do we encounter the first Egyptian, at the Hid Mem- 
" phite dynasty, taken with Lepsius about the 35th century B. c, 
" or some 5300 years backward from our present hour ? 

" You will find, after examination of the plates 437 before you, which 

434 Maury, LegendSs Pieuses du Moyen-Age, Paris, 8vo., 1843; pp. 239, 252-3, 261-77. 

435 "A conviction of things unseen;" Paul, Epistle to the Hebrews, si. 1 :— Shaepe's New 
Testament, p. 406. 

436 De Brotonne, Filiations et Migrations des Peuples. 

431 Lepsius, Denhmaler a.us JEgypten, Abth. I, B. 1-40 ; or thereabouts, which, with other 
tableaux, were suspended in front of the audience. Cf., also, some deductions from their 
study, developed in the same lecture, in Types of Mankind, pp. 412-4: and add now endless 
confirmations resulting through Mariette's later discoveries (supra, p. 489-94). 



THE POLYGENISTS. 557 

" are authentic copies of the oldest sculptures of man now known 
"upon earth, that neither infancy nor childhood is represented by 
" these most ancient of records, hardly even adolescence ; but that the 
" first Egyptian beheld on these archaic hieroglyphs, leaps at a bound 
" from out of the night of unnumbered generations antecedent to his 
"day, a full-grown, if a young, man — endowed with a civilization 
" already so advanced 5300 years ago, that it requires an eye most 
" experienced in Nilotic art to detect differences of style between 
" these primordial sculptures of the Hid, IVth, and Vth dynasties, 
" and those of the more florid Diospolitan, or Augustan, period of 
" the XVIIth and XVTHth dynasties, carved twenty centuries later, 
" and during Mosaic times in Egypt !" 

Such a practised eye is the gift of our erudite collaborator M. 
Pulszky ; and to his paper (ante, Chapter IE), I beg leave to refer the 
reader for accurate details ; closing, for myself, further definitions of 
chronology with the philosophical comment of A. "W. von Schlegel : m 

" Time has conveyed to us many kinds of chronology : it is the 
business of historical criticism to distinguish between them and to 
estimate their value. The astronomical chronology changes purely 
theoretic cycles into historical periods ; the mythical makes its way 
supported by obscure genealogical tables ; the hypothetic is an inven- 
tion of either ancient or modern chronographers ; and, lastly, the 
documentary rests upon the parallel uninterrupted demarcation of 
events, according to a settled reckoning of years. The last alone 
deserves to be called 'chronology' in the strictest sense; it begins, however, 
much later than is commonly supposed. Had this been duly consi- 
dered, we might have dispensed with many an air-built system." 

Egypt, oldest of historical lands, representing, therefore, but the 
" middle ages" of mankind's development upon earth, typified by our 
cosmic man, arrived at one-third of the "three-score and ten years," 
imagined by Hebrew writers to be the average of post-Mosaic 439 
human longevity, it follows that, at the Hid dynasty, say 5300 years 
ago, the Egyptians at least, among, very likely, other oriental nations 
whose annals are lost, had long before passed through their periods 
of adolescence, childhood, and infancy. If we reflect that, since the 
fall of Grecian culture — itself built upon thousands of years of ex- 
perience acquired by preceding Eastern nationalities already, during 
the palmy day of Hellas, in their superannuation or decrepitude — 
it has required some 2000 years of knowledge accumulated upon 
knowledge, of inventions heaped upon discoveries, for our civiliza- 

438 Darstellung der JEyyptischen Mylhologie * * * -and Chronologie (Prichard's) Vorrede, 
Bonn, 1837 ; pp. xliv-1. 

439 Types of Mankind, pp. 706-12. 



558 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

tion to reach the noon of this XlXth century ; what longer extent 
of time must, I ask, "be allowed for the Egyptians to have attained to 
that social development attested by the kingly pyramids, princely and 
aristocratic tombs of the IVth Memphite dynasty, 440 when, — unlike 
ourselves, who have improved the patrimony, by them, their contem- 
poraries, and successors, bequeathed to us — they seem to have begun 
life without precedents : and, consequently, having had to grope 
through their anterior stages of adolescence, childhood, and infancy, 
before reaching the manhood of their first monumental recognition 
by us, must have found each civilizing acquirement the more arduous, 
exactly in the ratio as, retroceding in antiquity, their national life 
approximated to its nursery. 

Yet the Egyptians dwelt upon purely alluvial land, bounded on 
either side by rocky deserts ; and the river itself betokens, at every 
period of its flow into the Mediterranean, the ever-tranquil operation 
of the same laws that constitute its organism at the present day. 

" Linked, through its perennial rise at the summer solstice, with 
the astronomical revolutions of the divine Orb of day at the acme of 
his ardent power, and most glorious effulgence, — marked, in the 
sky's cerulean blue, during the period of its increase, by the heliacal 
ascent of Sirius, — each monthly phenomenon of the deified river was 
consecrated by sempiternal correspondencies in the heavens ; at the 
same time that, to the mind of the devout Egyptian, Hapimoou, the 
numerous waters, "Father of the Gods in Senem," 441 appeared to be 
the most ancient of divinities, in his capapity of progenitor of the 
celestial Amun, himself " a great God, king of the Gods ;" who, 
through a mythical association with Nouf, was the " Father of the 
Fathers of the Gods, period of periods of years." In fact, as the 
benign inundations of the river necessarily preceded, in point of 
date, the formation of the alluvium, the Nile seemed, to the first 
human wanderers on its sedgy banks, to be the physical parent of all 
things good and beneficent. 

"Exalted, in the sacred papyrus Booh of the Bead, to the heavenly 
abodes of Elysian beatitude, the Celestial Nile was supposed to re- 
generate, by lustration, the souls of the departed Egyptians, and to 
fertilize, by irrigation, the gardens of happiness tilled by their im- 
mortal spirits, in Amenthi ; during the same time that, on earth, the 
Terrestrial Nile, by its depositions of alluvion created, while its 
waters inundated, a country so famed among Eastern Nations for its 
boundless fecundity, as to be compared (in Gen. xiii, 10,) to the 

440 It is taken for granted that Lepsius's Denkmaler, the only compendium of documents 
coetaneous with these primitive times, is known, at least, to the doubting critic. 
*" Birch, Gallery of Antiquities, part II, pp. 25, 10, 2 ; and PI. XIII. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 559 

" Garden of leKOuall, like the land of Mitzeaim:" — 44 that is, the 
two Muss'r-s, the two Egypts, upper and lower ; or else, Mitzrites, the 
Egyptians ; over which the androgynous Hapimoou crowned with 
the Lotus and Papyrus tiaras, in his duplex character of the Southern 
and the Northern Niles, annually spread out the prolific mould and 
the nourishing liquid, through which he was at once the Creator and 
the Nurse of Egypt. 

"Thus, renowned from immemorial ages as the gift of the Nile, 
Egypt issues from the womb of primordial time armed cap-a-pie, like 
Minerva, with a civilization already perfected at the very earliest 
epoch of her history, hieroglyphed on the monuments of the Illd and 
IVth dynasties, prior to the 35th century before the Christian era. 
But, the River itself, — origin, vital principle, and motive cause of 
that wondrous civilization, has flowed on unceasingly at the foot of 
the Pyramids ; its Sources a marvel, an enigma, an unfathomable 
mystery, to above one-hundred-and-sixty consecutive human genera- 
tions, which have 'lived, moved, and had a being' since the lime- 
stone cliffs of Memphis were first quarried into tombs." 443 

Hence it is legitimately to be inferred, that those geological cata- 
clysms and volcanic dislocations which, in Europe, filled caverns 
and ossuaries with bones of extinct genera mingled with those of 
man, and rolled silex-implements of human industry into French 
diluvial drift (supra), occurred at an age anterior to the settled quiet- 
ness of Miotic economy ; because, a few decades of feet, caused by 
such convulsions, added to the historical level of Mediterranean 
waters, would have left abundant marks around the Memphite pyra- 
mids ; whereas, nothing of the kind is to be seen there, or elsewhere, 
throughout monumental Egypt. 444 

It becomes, therefore, next to positive, as a corollary to the pre- 
ceding chain of facts, that man's presence, also (judging from the 
rudeness of his silex-arts) then in his childhood's phase, must, in 
Europe, antedate even human infancy on the Nile's alluvium. What 
vistas of antiquity ! Archaeology, having herein sufficiently blown 
away the historical fogs and scud that, in nautical phrase, obstructed 
his vision, now cheerfully resigns a clean spyglass into the hands of 
the palaeontologist. 

442 Nash, "On the origin and derivation of the term Copt, and the name of Egypt;" 
Burke's Ethnological Journal, April, 1849; pp. 490-496: — Types of Mankind, pp. 493-5. 

443 Gliddon, Handbook to the Nile, London, 8vo, Madden, 1849; pp. 34-5. 

444 See Lepsius, Chronologie, I, p. 24 — how Herodotus and Plato say the Egyptians had 
never heard of the Hebrew flood. 



SCO THE MONOGEKISTS AND 



PART V. 

" Adam, ante mortem ejus, convocavit omnes filios suos, qui grant in numero XV 

milia virorum absque mulieribus." 

(Vita Ade ct Eve, Anon., A. D. 1460). «= 

According to the Hebrew and the Samaritan Texts, 446 Adam was 
only 130 years old at the birth of Seth, his third son ; according to 
the Septuagint Version, and to Josephus, his age was then 230.*" 
In either case, the precise year is fixed by Archbishop Usher at b. c. 
3874. 448 "And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 

445 Philomneste, p. 37. 

446 Rev. E. B. Elliott, A. M., Horce Apocalyptical, London, 8vo, 1846; IV, p. 254: — Hat- 
wood's Von Boiilen, Introduction to Genesis, II, pp. 97-9. 

447 King James's version, Genesis, V, 3, 4, 5. 

448 We have seen (supra, note 263) that Tubal-Cain is the God-Vulcan; and now in Seth 
it is easy to recognize, through Josephus (Antiq. Jud., I, 2, &c), and the dialectic mutation 
of S into T aspirated, the God TeT of the Egyptians, "author of letters" (Bunsen, Egypt's 
Place, I, pp. 393-5), otherwise Tautus, or Tholh; not to be any longer confounded, as he 
has been by some, with SET or Typhon. See the argument of Alfred Maury ("Personage 
de la Mort," Revue Archeologique, 15 Aout, 1847, pp. 325-6). It had been formerly indicated 
( Types of Mankind, p. 562) that the mother of Seth, before she was named Eve (i. e. " KAiUaH, 
because she was the mother of all living," KAala; Gen. Ill, 20) had been called AiSAaH, 
ISE, or Isis, who was famed as " the universal mother." It has been likewise shown pre- 
viously (Types of Mankind, p. 544), why the patriarch Enos is only the "God of the vulgar." 

If etymologies are to be sanctioned in the explanation of primitive myths, the above four 
examples of Vulcan, Thoih, Isis, and Enos, now identified among the antediluvian progenitors 
of mankind, will be found more susceptible of historic and palasographical justification than 
the learned Mr. Osburn's unique discoveries (Monumental History of Egypt, London, 1854, 
I, pp. 239-40, 245, 339-44) of Adam, Noah, Ham, and Mizraim, in Egyptian hieroglyphics ! 

Not merely (p. 222) are " Scripture Patriarchs identified with Egyptian Deities," but, in 
his ingenious and pious book, the very " names of Goddesses recorded upon the monuments," 
are declared to be "those of the wives of the patriarchs;" although this excellent critic 
allows that " they are not preserved in the Bible." 

To the same class, engendered by a similar monomania for "confirmations," in defiance 
of reason and historical truth, belongs the alleged discovery of the name and exploits of 
Moses in contemporaneous hieratic scrolls (Rev. D. J. Heath, M. A., The Exodus Papyri, 
London, 1855), — as if the English translation itself, utterly foreign to ancient or modern 
Egyptian ideas, did not sufficiently betray an Englishman's imposition during the present 
century! As for the Rev. C. Fokster's last (A Harmony of Primceval Alphabets), wherein 
there is not a single hieroglyphic drawn with even childish correctness, nor a solitary pho- 
netic value exact, they fall (together with his Himyaritic, Sinaic, and Assyrian interpretations, 
&c.) into a simpler category, — that of downright imposture. The self-deceptions, or per- 
haps "canards," of M. Barrois (Dactylogie et Language Primitif reslitule d'apres les Monu- 
ments, Paris, 4to, 1850), have hoaxed even His Holiness the Pontiff (Lecture litterale des 
Hieroglyphes el des Cuneiformes, Paris, 4to, 1853 ; p. 36) : but being harmless pasquinades 
of a gentleman who pays liberally for the publication of his own books, as well as for any 
clever cheat (Pulszky's paper, supra, note 17, Chap. II) that "Chevaliers d'industrie" may 
foist upon his credulity, they really become sublime, viewed in comparison with some of the 
instances of fraud or hallucination above cited. 



THE POL YGENIST S. 561 

eight hundred [LXX, 700] years ; and lie begat sons and daughters ; 
— and all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty 
years ; and he died :" leaving a rather large family, if we credit the 
biography, above cited, that his children numbered 15000 men besides 
the ivomen. From what sources his second biographer gathered these 
statistics does not appear, any more than whence the so-called Mosaic 
compiler obtained the other Adamic particulars recorded in Genesis. 
The earlier biography, assuming Archbishop Usher's dates to be in- 
contestable, must have been written (Deuter. XXXI, 9, 26,) about b. c. 
1451; or some 1623 years after Adam's decease, — an event which, 
taking place 930 years after the Creation, ascertained to be b. c. 
4004, occurred in b. c. 3074. The author of the " Life of Adam and 
Eve " lived, it is true, in a. d. 1460, or 4534 years after Adam's death ; 
but any one who believes that anecdotes of the protopatriarch's long 
life could have been preserved, for incorporation into the PentSteuch, 
during 1623 years, cannot reasonably deny extension of the same 
possibility (1451 + 1460) for 2911 years longer.™ 

"We need not be astonished either at the number of Adam and 
Eve's children during 800 years ; because, while, on the one hand, 
Cardinal Wiseman 450 and the Rev. J. Pye Smith 451 teach how physical 
causes were in more vehement operation before the " Flood" than 
after; on the other, the multiplication of the Jews in Egypt, during the 
430, or 400, or 215, years of their sojourn, when post-diluvial physical 
causes were precisely the same as at present, is equally formidable, 
and possesses equal claims upon credence. Jacob and his family, in 
number 70, 453 or 75, persons, settle in the land of Goshen ; and their 
descendants issue forth "about 600,000 men on foot, without the 
children, and a mixed multitude" 453 — or GouM-AaRaB, Arab levy or 
horde. Commentators vary in their estimates of the number of souls, 
from 1,800,000 to 3,000,000; nor is the duration of the sojourn itself 
at all settled ; 454 but the latter point is unimportant to my present 
argument. So is also the disproportionate area in Eastern lower 

In making these assertions upon my own responsibility, there are two courses left open 
to the reader who cares about verification; 1st, to inquire of the hierologists in charge of 
the Paris, Berlin, London, or Turin Museums, whether they do not support these repudia- 
tions ; or 2d, to defray the printing expenses of a thorough analysis of each work by myself, 
although I think "le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle." 

449 I am merely following, with a little more minuteness, the orthodox example of Dr. H all ) 
Analytical Synopsis, London ed. of Pickering's Races, 1851, p. xxxv. 

450 Connection between Science and Revealed Religion. 

451 Relation between the Holy Scriptures and Geological Science, 3d. ed. , London, 12mo, 1843; 
pp. 185, 243, 301, 340. 

452 Genesis, XLVI, 27: — Cahen, La Bible, trad. nouv. I, pp. 162-4, notes. 
4 <a Exodus, XII, 37, 38:— Op. cit., II, p. 50, note 37. 

154 Lepsius, Chron. der JEgypler, I, pp. 315-17. 

36 



562 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Egypt where this vast population of bondsmen is supposed to have 
dwelt. Now, simultaneously with the Israelitish bondage, their 
Egyptian masters embraced at least 5,000,000 of population; 455 the 
latter were the oppressors ; the former oppressed, — to such an abject 
and inconceivable degree, that they allowed even their first-born to 
be butchered without armed revolt. Nevertheless, they "multiplied 
exceedingly;" in consequence, as Eather Kircher states, 456 of the 
fecundative properties of the Mle. A simple rule of three will test 
the relative ratio of increase. 

If 75 Jews, in a given number of years, notwithstanding the most 
atrocious and attenuating despotism, multiply so as to leave Egypt 
in number (say the lowest figure) 1,800,000 souls ; what, during the 
same period, in the same climate, and favored by their comfortable 
position as slaveholders, instead of being slaves, was the statistical 
augmentation of 5,000,000 of Egyptians? 

There is no reason, therefore, to be appalled at the Rabbinical es- 
timate of the number of Adam's children by the "universal mother." 
Whatever the numerical amount may have been, their antediluvian 
descendants were drowned in the Elood. Noah, Shem, Ham, and 
Japhet, with their wives, in all but eight individuals, being the ouly 
persons who landed — B.C. 2348 — from the Ark upon Mount Ararat, 
to become the second progenitors of Mankind. 

From these four couples, after a considerable lapse of time down 
to the middle of this XTXth century, have proceeded, according to 

(population of the world.) 

Balbi 739 millions. 

Malte-Brun 800 " 

D'Halloy 750 

Eeynolds's Chart 852 " 

Ravenstein's Chart 1,216 " 

Inasmuch, however, as we are yet ignorant of the interior topo- 
graphy of at least one-third of the earth's surface, whilst we abso- 
lutely know little or nothing about myriads of human beings in- 
habiting such portions, it is probable that Dr. Gustaf Kombst's 
beautiful sheets 457 contain all attainable information, and to these I 

455 G-liddon, Otia JEgypliaca, p. 73. 

456 " Unde foeminoe non uno, duobus, aut tribus contentse, sed sex, septem aut octo foetus 
unico partu ; quod et Hebrai in Exodum commentatores memorant, subinde effundebant. 
Nemini igetur miruni esse debet, filiorum Israel spatio ducentorum prope annorum, quo 
-33gyptum incolebant, immensani fuisse propagationem :" — (Edipus JEgyptiacus, Rome, fol., 
1652; Tom. I, p. 52. 

457 "Ethnology, or the different nations and tribes of Man, traced according to Race, 
Language, Religion, and Form of Government" — revised and extended to 1854 ; — Johnston, 
Physical Adas, new ed., Edinburgh, 1855 : PI. 81, with six pages of description. 



THE POLYGEKISTS. 563 

beg leave to refer the reader for collateral statistics bearing upon our 
"Ethnographic Tableau." 

The difficulties experienced for many years, both in the capacities 
of lecturer and author, to popularize some branches of archaeological 
and ethnographic discoveries, had convinced me of the inadequacy 
of oral or written explanations compared with the rapid and convin- 
cing manner in which audiences, or readers, appreciate knowledge 
when accompanied by pictorial illustrations. It was my intention, 
therefore, upon undertaking, in 1854, to collect in Europe materials 
for my contribution to the present volume, to furnish an Ethnological 
Map, through which the differences and similarities, the divergencies 
and gradations, of the bestknown races of men could be seized by the 
eye at a glance. Taught also by travel, comparison, and study, that 
systems and classifications, hitherto advanced under the sanction of 
eminent names, are open to the grave objection of being premature in 
the present stage of knowledge, most of them having been conceived 
by anticipation of the facts, my purpose was to avoid them all : and 
neither to take the word " Caucasian" 458 as comprehending number- 
less distinct types of man, stretched out geographically from Scan- 
dinavia to the Dekhan ; nor the still more misapplicable term " Tou- 
ranian," 459 through which a modern linguistic school agglomerates, 
into one unaccountable mass, the 1001 different languages that happen 
to be neither Semitic nor Indo-Ger manic. It is through the misuse 
of well-defined specific appellatives, and their transposition into 
generic senses, coupled with a sort of philological "thimble-rig," 
which strives to conceal individual ignorance, — when, in reality, this 
ignorance is universal — that the "public mind," uncritical and spell- 
bound by authority, as it necessarily must be, consoles itself with the 
notion that the " unity of the human species" is demonstrated, partly 
because Cuvier arbitrarily grouped all humanity into three grand 
classes, Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian ; m and partly because 
the excellent Sanscrit scholar, Prof. Max-Miiller, chooses to divide 

158 First used by Blumenbach, for convenience' sake, in eranioscopie subdivisions. 

459 Invented first and applied to ethnology by Prichard, I believe (Researches) ; it is time 
that this unlucky term should be brought back to its primitive historical meaning. 

460 Caucasian, from Kauk-Asos, means only the "mountain of the Asi," or "Asi of the 
mountain;" referring to a special nation (As, Os, Ossetes) on the Caucasian range. Mongol 
meant " brave, haughty," and was the peculiar honorific title of the golden horde of Ginghis- 
khan. Ethiopian, from Aithiops, signified only a "sun-burnt face," and, in Homeric times, 
indicated merely all nations darker than Greeks ; to the exclusion of negro races, at that 
period unknown to the fair-skinned Hellenes. To classify Egyptians, Dravidians, and 
Basques, as if they had ever been one family, instead of three distinct types, under the namo 
" Caucasian," which in no respect suits any of them ;■ — to include Lapps and Siamese within 
the designation " Mongolian," foreign and remote alike from both : — or to embrace under 
the appellation of "sun-burnt faces" (that is, only tanned or swarthy) African Negroes, 



564 THE MONO-GEN ISTS AND 

languages in general "into three families, which have heen called 
the Semitic, the Avian, and the Turanian." i&l 

In order to explain the grounds of objection, one must digress 
for a moment upon these three terms. With the reservations of 
Renan, 462 and as the synonym of Syro-Arabian in its application to 
languages alone, the name "Semitic" is probably the best discover- 
able ; but, when applied physiologically 63 to pure Nigritian families 
on the Mozambique no less than on the Guinea coasts, its adoption 
is delusive, because it extends the area of true Shemite amalgama- 
tions with African tribes far beyond legitimate induction ; and 
suggests intermixture as the cause of really -insignificant facial 
resemblances between some races of negroes and the Arabians, 
without taking incompatibilities of color, form, hair, and endless 
dissimilar facts, into account. The law of gradation sufficiently 
explains these very questionable analogies, 464 upon which mono- 
genists alone lay stress, — more frequently from sentiment than from 
evidence. 

"With the word "Arian," as employed by Prof. Max-Miiller, it 
would ill-become me to dissent when selected by so great a master 
in Sanscritic lore. On the contrary, science is unanimous in its 
adoption, which his learned note 465 amply justifies; but it is with 
the wide extension given to "Turanian" that my quarrel lies. What 
is its origin ? What its meaning ? What its antiquity ? 

In the trilinguar inscriptions of the (a. d. 223-636) Sassanian 
dynasty, 466 the Persian monarchs assume in Greek the titles " Kings 
Apiavuv xai Avapiavuv" — i.e., of Iranians and non- Iranians j equivalent 

Oceanic Papuas, and American Indians, — such nomenclature leads to nothing but mystifica- 
tion in the study of Man. I might likewise note the vagueness of Negro, Pafuan and Indian, 
in ethnography. 

<o Languages of the Seat of War, 1855, p. 23, 86-95: — and in Bunsen's Outlines, 1854, I, 
pp. 238, 342-486. In the former work, our erudite linguist actually speaks of the "descend- 
ants of Tur (p. 87)" ! In the latter, the biblico-Kur'anic harmonizings of Aboo '1-Ghazee 
about " Tur and Japheth" are accepted as historical! Compare Types of Mankind, p. 476. 

462 Langue Semitiques, 1855, p. 2. 

463 Norris, in Prichard's Nat. Hist., 1855, pp. 420-7. Serres, Races negres de VAfrique 
Orientate, Comples Rendus de VAcad. des Sciences, XXX, June, 1850, pp. 7-8, 13. I have 
Been some of M. de Froberville's casts, and must protest against M. Serres's Keport that 
they are of a type " mfitis semitiques:" nor, in view of my twenty-years' familiarity with 
Semitic races and their hybrids in Africa and Asia, — and fifteen years of observation of 
mulattoes in America — am I disposed to accept the " ipse dixit" of an Academician, who 
never had opportunity of seeing a dozen living specimens of "metis semitiques" in all his 
life, against my own experience amongst thousands. 

404 Types of Mankind, pp. 180, 186, 191, 209-10. 

480 Op. cit., pp. 27-9: — Compare Bergmann, Peuples Primitifs de la Race de Jafelc, 
Colmar, 8vo, 1853, pp. 10-20. 

466 De Sacy, Me'moire sur diverses Antiquites de la Perse, et sur les Me'daillcs des Rois de la 



THE POLYGENISTS. 565 

to Persians and those who were not Persians. Erne centuries pre- 
viously, in the cuneiform inscriptions of Persepolis, 467 Darius speaks 
of Hariva, Aria, — calling Persia, Parsa ; hut at neither period does 
the word " Tur" yet figure as the equivalent for now-Iranian : nor 
does it occur in earlier writings than Firdoozee's Shah-Nameh, 
"Book of Kings" composed in the lOth-llth century. Conceding 
that the immortal bard was versed in traditions that survived the 
wreck of Persic literature after the fall of Yezdegerd, it will hardly 
be claimed that " Tur" is an historical personage instead of a mythic 
personification of Scythic, i.e., non-Persian, nations. 468 Oriental 
writers understand, by Avians, or "people of Iran," the inhabitants 
of lands enclosed by the Euphrates, Persian Gulf, Indus, and Gihon ; 
and by Touranians, barbarians, — "adjem" or foreigners, like the 
Gfoim, gentiles, of the Hebrews : so that Airan and Aniran, or Iran 
and Touran, signify only Persia contrasted with Turkestan. "Moul- 
lah Firoze, a learned Parsee of Bombay, explains the name of Airan 
to be derived from that of Believer ; and that of Anairan, meaning 
Unbelievers." 469 The same senses may be gathered from the Zend- 
Avesta and the Boun-dehesch-Pehlvi, 470 wherein praises and vic- 
tories are the appanage of Eeriene Veedjo, the "Pure Iran;" curses 
and defeats that of Touran. But these Parsee codes themselves are 
not of high antiquity. 

If Firdoozee's grand epic be consulted, which purports to define 
the history of Persia from the tauro-kephalic Ka'iumurts during 3600 
years down to the Saracenic invasion, a poem itself also replete with 
alterations by copyists, 471 one perceives at once how the mythical Fe- 
ridoon divided the empire among his three sons, — "To Selim he 
gave Piiim and Khawer; to Tur, Turan; and to Irij, Iran or Per- 

dynasties des Sassanides, Paris, 4to, 1793 ; pp. 12, 31, 64, PI. Inscrip. A. 3 ; and pp. 47, 55—60, 
183. "Iran we Turan" does occur among Persian inscriptions at Tchehil-minar ; but 
their date is Hedjra 826, a. d. 1423, — or long subsequently to Firdoozee. 

467 Rawlinson, Behistun, 1846, pp. i-xxxix. 

468 " Iran aut Ilan est Persia culturi zoroastrico addicta, orthodoxa ; Aniran s. Anilan 
sunt provincial extranea?, Sassanidarum imperio subjectae, quae quoque nomine Turan, i. e. 
Transoxana, a scriptoribus orientalibus appellantur, quarum incolae ab ignicolis vel hae- 
retici, ve) irreligiosi habiti sunt:" (Tychsen, De Cuneatis Inscriplionibus Persepolitanis 
lucvbratio, Rostock, 1798, p. 41, note). 

469 Ker Pobtek, Travels in Georgia, Persia, &c, London, 4to, 1821; II, p. 189: — 
compare Richardson, Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English, London, 1806, I, p. 313, 
voce " Turan." 

*"> Anquetil du Perron, Zend-Avesta, Paris, 4to, 1771 ; I. Part 1, pp. 16, 20, 26; II. 
preface, p. 348 seq. : — compare, for significations of "Airan," St. Martin, Memoires hislo- 
riques sur V Arminie, Paris, 1818; I. pp. 271-8. 

471 Ouselet, Travels, 3;c. in Persia, London, 4to, 1819; I. Preface, p. viii., and note 5 — 
"upon an average thirty different readings in every page." 



566 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

sia." 472 Hence it becomes obvious tbat the Persian poet, like the 
Chaldasan chorographer of Xth Genesis, in all his ethnic personifica- 
tions, anthropomorphosized a country currently known as "Turan" 
into an ideal king Tiir. His translator observes that, ancient Scythia 
embraced the whole of Turan, which appellative was but an early 
synonym for Turkestan ; in this, coinciding with Dubeux. 473 The 
same legend, slightly varied, reaches us through Mirkavend, 474 who 
died about Hedjra 903=a. d. 1498, viz : that Tur received Turkestin 
as his patrimony from Feridoon, and then conspired with Seleem to 
murder their brother Tradj, king of Iran-Shehr : alluding doubtless, 
through an Oriental allegory of three men, to simultaneous attacks 
of Semitic and Scythic invaders upon the lion-standard of Persia. 

Being Persian designations, "Iran and Touran" must receive 
solution through Arian etymologies ; 475 and these are furnished in 
one paragraph by Bbrgmanh, 476 who as a favored pupil of Eugene 
Burnouf inspires every confidence. 

"Thus, in the same manner that the Hindoos, particularly at the 
sacerdotal point of view of the Brahmans, called their country by the 
name of Aryd (Honorable), or of Arydvartta (Honorable country), in 
opposition to the heretical countries named Turya (Persian Utt-dryd, 

472 The Shah-Nameh of Firdausi, Transl. Atkinson, London, 1832; pp. 50, 161-2, and p. 
519, note: — of. Rlapkoth " Histoire de l'Anoienne Perse, d'apres Firdoussi," in which the 
age of the 2d (Kai'anian) dynasty is taken at s. c. 803, and the 1st (Pishdadian) as com- 
mencing 3342 years previously ! Tableaux, pp. 3-4, 5-22. 

473 Perse, Univ. Pittor., p. 225. 

474 Mikkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, transl. Shea, London, 8vo, 1832, 
pp. 138-86. 

475 1 incline to think, notwithstanding, that the enigma of the well-known andro-leontine 
and andro-taurine sphinxes of Persepolis, and possibly also those of earlier Assyria, can be, 
in part, explained through Iran and Touran, as understood in three languages, Arian, Se- 
mitic, and Scythic ; corresponding to the three forms of Achsemenian cuneatics, and to the 
triple medley of three types of man, Arabian, Persian, and Turkish, in the same countries 
at this day. Thus, in the first class of tongues, IR-an, as Zion-land "par excellence" (always 
the heraldic symbol of Persia, and blended into her monarch's names in the form of " sheer' n 
contrasts with TOUR-an, Bull-land ; which, on the one side, is found in A-TUR, Ashour, As- 
syria, — and on the other applies to the ancient zoological conditions of Mawaranuhar, &c. 
where wild cattle were enormously abundant, whence Tour became the figurative emblem 
of barbarous 7V7--kish races ? But, with an indication that, in Scythic tongues, IR means 
also man, a curious inquiry, that could be justified only through many pages of elucidation, 
is submitted to the consideration of fellow-students of archaeology. 

476 Les Peuples Primitifs de la Race de Iaph&te : JBsquisse Ethnogenialogique et hisiorique ; 
Colmar, 8vo., 1853; p. 17: — Cf. Max Muilek's note in Bunsen, Three Linguistic Disserta- 
tions, 1848, p. 296. 

De Saulct, I find, read "Iran, de l'Iran" upon the inscriptions copied by the unfortu- 
nate Schulz, at Lake Van, 10 years ago (Secherches sur Vecriture Cuneiforme Assyrienne, 
Paris, 1848, p. 26): whilst a writer in the London Literary Gazette (1852, p. 610) said that 
he deciphered "Lordship of Irak and Iran" as well as "Lordship of Turan," on bricks in 
the British Museum. I have heard of no confirmation of the latter statement. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 567 

Outside of Aria, or Tu-dryd, Separated from Aria), and that they 
termed themselves Aryds as opposed to Mletchas (Feebles, Barbarians, 
Heretics ; ep. Heb. Gfoyim, Peoples, Strangers, Arabic el-aadjim, 
"Wretches, Barbarous), so likewise the Persians \Pahlavas — Sanscrit 
paraeus, Gr. pelekus, hatchet ; Pahlavdn = hatchet-bearers] designated 
themselves Aries or Artaes (Gentiles, Herodot. VII. 61) : and, in 
imitation of the Zend names Airydo, and of Tu-irya or An-airyao- 
danghdvo (Country not-honorable), they also gave the name Ariana 
(Gr. Ariane), and later that of Iran, to all countries situate between 
the. Tigris and the Indus, and between the Oxus and the Indian 
Ocean, because they were inhabited by orthodox Arians, worship- 
pers of Ormuzd (Zend. Ahuro mazddo, Great genius of the sun) ; 
whereas the misbelieving lands to the north and east, which were 
held to be the abode of Ahriman (Zend. Agra-mainyus), were called 
Anirdn (rJon-Iran) or Turdn (Ultra-Iran)." 

The antiquity of the word Tour an being thus brought down to 
recent post-Christian times in all books wherein it occurs, — -its signi- 
fication being imbued with the theological xenolasia of Mazdseans 
and Brahmans, and naturally restricted in application to Scythic 
hordes immediately contiguous to Aria, or Ariana — modern ethno- 
logy has no more right to extend its area all over the world, than to 
classify the xanthous Gaul of Cassar's time with the melanie Tamou- 
lian of the present Dekhan, together with red-headed Highlanders 
and raven-locked Wakabees, under the other false term " Cauca- 
sian." Indeed, before agreeing with Prof. Max Miiller (whose autho- 
rity is unquestionably the highest for its use), in tolerating the cor- 
rupted myths of Sheeite Persia as historical ; or talk of the " de- 
scendants of Tur" as if such metaphorical personage had really been 
father of those "Turanian tribes" which — since spread broadcast over 
the earth through this hypothesis — are now said to speak only " Tu- 
ranian languages," I should feel warranted in accepting, as a legiti- 
mate basis for ethnic nomenclature, that exquisite travesty of a lost 
book of Diodorus ; wherein the Greek text makes it evident, " How 
Britain, son of Jupiter and Paint, peopled the island [of England] ; 
but some say that Briton was indigenous, and Paint (Aiog xai Xpw/jwu) 
his daughter: — how Briton received Roman as his guest," &c. ; m or 
else, in considering Hiawatha a true portraiture of the thoughts and 
feelings of an American savage, instead of seeing in it merely the 
romantic ideal of a great Anglo-Saxon poet. 

1,7 Pkof. Henry Malden, "On pragmatized legends in History — Fragments from the 
Vlllth book of Diodorus, concerning Britain and her colonies" — Trans. Philol. Soc, Lon- 
don, Nov. 1854; pp. 217-28. For pious forgeries in quoting and rendering Diodorus's text, 
compare Miot's expose in Bibliolheque Hislorique, Paris, 1834; pp. 189-90, 429. 



568 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Touran possesses no historical sense but that of non-Persian (Ani- 
ranian) ethnologically : none but that of Turkestan geographically. 
It were as reasonable to divide Asiatic and European humanity into 
Semitic, British (for Avian), and non-British (for everybody else not 
compressible into such Procrustean bed), as to classify all these mul- 
tiform nations into Semitic, Arian (i. e. Persian) and Turanian ; 
when this last adjective suits, strictly speaking, no human group of 
families but the Turkish. 

Nevertheless, like Shakspeare's "word 'occupy,' which was an 
excellent good word before it was ill-sorted," m " Touranian" may still 
do some effective service in specifying, whenever their ethnic rela- 
tions become sufficiently cleared up, 479 the ancient inhabitants of 
countries now termed Turkestan : but, because " agglutination" 
happens to be their linguistic attribute, in common even with 
Hebrew (Semitic), and Sanscrit (Arian), and all human speech in its 
earlier formations: or because "in them the conjugation and the 
declension can still be taken to pieces," preserving all the while the 
radical syllable of the discourse, 480 — it does seem to me, that to 
classify, on such grounds alone, the transplanted and now prodi- 
giously-intermixed descendants of Hioung-nou, Sian-pi, San-miao 
or Miao-tse, Tata, Yue-tchi, Ting-lings, Geou-gen, Thiu-kiu, and other 
indigenous races (every one according to physiological descriptions 
distinct from the rest) known in ancient Asia to the Chinese, 4 " 1 under 
such a misnomer as "Turanian;" to forget that primitive and 
indefinable Scythia has vomited forth upon Europe men of absolutely 
different stocks and unfixed derivations — Huns, white and nearly 
black, Kliazars, Awars, Comans, Alains, &c. — or finally, to connect, 
through one omnific name, Samoyeds with Athapascans (if not also 
with Toltecs and Botocudos !), hybrid Osmanlees with pure A'inos, 
Madjars with Telingas, 482 — these are aberrations from common sense 

478 Henry IV, 2d part, Act II, scene 4. 

* n For the real difficulties, slurred over by English ethnographers, see Klaproth and 
Desmoulins. 

480 Incomparably well indicated by the Turkish verb "sev-mek;" Max-Muller, op. cit., 
pp. 111-4. 

481 The most copious account of these nations, compiled from the best sources, is in 
Jardot, Revolutions des Peuples de I'Asie Moyenne, Paris, 2 vols. 8vo, 1839. The Arabs, let 
me here mention, did not reach Chinese vicinities, through navigation, before the 9th 
century (Maury, "Examen de la route que suivaient, au IX e siecle de notre ere, les 
Arabes et les Persans pour aller en Chine" — Bulletin de la Soc. de Geographie, Avril, 1846). 

482 Physical amalgamation -with higher types, than any branch of the Turkish family was 
in the days of Alp Arslan, has transmuted his mongrel descendants residing around the 
Mediterranean, Archipelago, and Black Sea, to such an amazing extent that it is difficult 
to describe what a real Turk (and I have lived where thousands of all grades reside) should 
be. That the present Caucasianized Osmanlee is not the same animal now that his fore- 
fathers were only in the 12th century, is easily proved. Benjamin de Tudela — speaking 



THE POLYGENISTS. 569 

into which Bunsen's endorsement of Prichard's " Touranian" has 
led an amazing number of worthy monogenists on this side of the 
water ; hut which Prof. Max-Muller himself never contemplated in 
adopting this unlucky term : for the very learned philologist ex- 
cludes the Chinese, 4113 and doubtless withholds other An-Arian types 
of mankind from his Turanian arrangement. 

It appears to be the unavoidable fate of every human science to 
pass through a phase of empiricism. Each one, at some time or 
other, is regarded as a sort of universal panacea competent to heal 
all controversial sores. Such, at this moment, throughout Anglo- 
Saxondom, is the popular opinion concerning "Philology:" last 
refuge for alarmed protestant monogenism, — at the very time that 
Continental scholarship has stepped into a higher sphere of linguistic 
philosophy, which already recognizes the total inadequacy of philo- 
logy (or other science) to solve the dilemma whether humanity 
originates in one human pair, or has emanated from a plurality of 
zoological centres. Philology, instead of being ethnology, is only 
one instrument, if even a most precious one, out of many other tools 
indispensable in ethnological researches. The powers of the science 
termed "la linguistique" are not infinite, even supposing that 
correct knowledge had as yet been obtained of even one-half the 
tongues spoken over the earth ; or that it were within the capacity 
of one man to become sufficiently acquainted with the grammatical 
characteristics of the remainder. We do not even possess a complete 
catalogue of the names of all tongues ! 4&4 Yet, "What studious man 
is there," inquires Le Clerc, "whose imagination has not been caught 
straying from conjecture to conjecture, from century to century, in 
search of the debris of a forgotten tongue ; of those relics of words 
that are but the fragments of the history of Nations ?" JS5 Eichhoff 
eloquently continues the idea — "The sciences of Philology and 
History ever march in concert, and the one lends its support to the 
other ; because the life of Nations manifests itself in their language, 
the faithful representative of their vicissitudes. Where national 
chronology stops short, where the thread of tradition is broken, the 
antique genealogy of words that have survived the reign of empires 

of Tartar flat-noses — narrates, "The king of Persia being enraged at the Turks, who have 
two holes in the midst of their face instead of a nose, for having plundered his kingdom, 
resolved to pursue them." (Basnage, Hist, of the Jews, p. 473). 

483 Op. cil., pp. 86, 95-6. I refer to this admirable work in preference to " Phonology" 
in Bunsen's Outlines, because the latter has been disposed of by Renan (supra, note 16). 

481 Adelung (Catalogue, St. Petersburg, 1820, p. 185) counted 3,064 languages: Balbi 
enumerated 860 languages and 5000 dialects. The greatest linguist on record, Cardinal 
Mezzofanti, was acquainted, it is said, with but 52. 

185 Olia JEgyptiaca, p. 12. 



570 THE MONOGEBISTS AND 

comes in to shed light upon the very cradle of humanity, and to 
consecrate the memory of generations long since engulphed in the 
quicksands of time." Thus much is certainly within the competency 
of "philology;" and we may concede to it also the faculty,, where the 
historic elements for comparison exist — as in the range of Indo-ger- 
manic, Semitic, and some few other well-studied groups of tongues — 
of ascertaining relationships of intercourse between widely-separate 
families of man ; but not always, as it is fashionable now to claim, 
and which I will presently show to be absurd, of a community of 
origin between two given races physiologically and geographically 
distinct. Again, no tongue is permanent. More than 150 years ago, 
Richard Bentley, perhaps the greatest critic of his age, 486 exemplified 
this axiom while unmasking the Greek forgeries of Alexandrian 
sophists. " Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living 
creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration ; some words go off, 
and become obsolete ; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into 
common use ; or the same word is inverted in a new sense and notion, 
which in tract of time makes as observable a change in the air and 
features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face. 
All are sensible of this in their own native tongues, where continual 
use makes a man a critic." But, at the same time that this is the 
law deduced from the historical evidences of written languages, its 
action is enormously accelerated among petty barbarous tribes, such 
as a few Asiatic, many African, several American, and still more 
frequently among the Malayan, and Oceanico-Australian races. 
Here, mere linguistic land-marks are as often completely effaced as 
re-established ; while the typical characteristics of the race endure, 
and therefore can alone serve as bases for ethnic classification. Yet 
we read every day in some shape or other : 

" The decision of the Academy (of St. Petersburg, 40 years ago) 
was, however, quite unreserved upon this point ; for it maintains its 
conviction, after a long research, that all languages are to be considered 
as dialects (of one) now lost." 487 This enunciation of an eminent 
Cardinal, although dating some 20 years back, is still quoted and 
re-quoted by thankful imbecility which, on any other point of doc- 
trine, would shudder at Romanist authority. And it excites Homeric 
smiles among those who happen to know the estimation in which 
Egyptologists now hold M. de Goulianoff's Archeologie egyptienne and 
Acrologie, to see his report to the Russian Academy used as a dog- 
matical finality to further linguistic advancement! In England he 

486 Dissertations upon the Epistles of Pkalaris, Themislocles, Socrates, Euripides, and upon the 
Fables of JEsop (1699); Dyce's ed., London, 8vo, 1836; II, p. 1. 

487 Wiseman, Connection, &c, 2d ed., 8vo, London, 1842 ; pp. 68-9. , 



THE POLTGENISTS. 571 

has been succeeded by a school which discards the term "race" alto- 
gether ; because its Oracle, after an amazing number of contradict- 
ory propositions, has latterly stated 488 how "he believes that all the 
varieties of man are referable to a single species," as per catalogue, 
Luke Burke judiciously comments, of barbarian vocabularies. 

One recipe, for attaining expeditiously a conclusion so devoutly 
wished, is simple enough. It is the following: — 1st, to start with 
king James's version of Genesis, Chapter IV, verse 25 : — 2d, to jump 
over 4730 years that an Archbishop says have elapsed from that day 
to this, and take the population descended from "Adam and Eve" to 
be now exactly 1,216,670,000 : m — 3d, to invent a sort of frame-work 
(say "escritoire") containing precisely 9 pigeon-holes: — 4th, to label 
them Monosyllabic, Turanian, Caucasian (alias Dioscurian, said to be 
the same thing), Persian, Indian, Oceanic, American, African, and 
European : — 5th, disregarding such trifles as history, anatomy, or 
physiological distinctions, to squeeze all humanity, " as per vocabu- 
lary," into these 9 compartments: — 6th, to chant "te Deum" over the 
whole performance; — and lastly, 7th, to baptize as infidels those who 
disbelieve the "unity of the human species" to be proved by any 
such hocus-pocus, or arbitrary methods of establishing that of which 
Science, at the present day, owing to insufficiency of materials, 
humbly confesses herself to be ignorant ; whilst she indignantly re- 
pudiates, as impertinent and mendacious, the suppression of all facts 
that are too three-cornered to be jammed into the 9 pigeon-holes afore- 
said. Such, in sober sadness, is the effect produced upon the minds 
of unbiassed anthropologists, by this unscientific system. They can- 
not, for the life of them, as concerns real ethnology, where the theo- 
loger sees in each of these 9 pigeon-holes a wondrous " confirmation," 
perceive in the whole arrangement anything more than a reflex of 
the mind of their ingenious inventor. What true philological science 
has achieved, in the 6th year after the middle of our XlXth century, 
may be studied in M. Alfred Maury's Chapter I of this volume. Its 
results do not appear to favor monogenistic theories of human lan- 
guage. 

It is with the express object of avoiding this, or any other unnatural 
system, that my "Ethnographic Tableau" has been prepared. Typo- 
graphical exigencies compel an appearance, I must allow, of arbitrary 
classification : but no definitive bar to progress is intended by its 
arrangement; and I shall be proud to follow any better that impartial 
inquiries into Nature's laws may in the future elicit. Such as this 

488 London Athenaeum, June 17, 1854. 

489 Ravenstein, Descriptive Notes, and Ethnographical Map of the World, London, 185-4 ; 
pp. 2-4. 



572 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

"Tableau" may be, it is the result of years of labor and comparison ; 
and the ingenuous critic, in view of the mechanical difficulties of its 
execution, together with those of condensing so many different sub- 
jects into limited spaces, may peradventure look upon it favorably, 
under these circumstances. 

We resume. It seems reconcilable with the theory, — now univer- 
sally accepted by naturalists as demonstrated through botany, herpe- 
tology, entomology, zoology, &c, of the original distribution of 
animate creatures in centres, zones, or provinces of Creation — that 
each one of the various primitive forms of human speech arose within 
that geographical centre where the particular group of men inheriting 
its time-developed, or now-corrupted dialects, was created. One can 
furthermore perceive that the law of gradation — in physical characteris- 
tics from one group of mankind to another, when restored to their ear- 
liest historical sites — to some extent holds good upon surveying their 
languages: that is to say, abstraction made of known migrations and 
intermixtures among races, each grand type of humanity with its 
typical idioms of speech, can be carried back, more or less approxi- 
mately, to the cradle of its traditionary origin. Thus, for instance, 
when, in America, we behold an Israelite, it requires no effort of 
imagination to trace his ethnic pedigree backwards across the At- 
lantic to Europe, and thence to Palestine ; whence history, combined 
with the analogies of his race-character, and formerly special tongue, 
accompanies him to Arpha-kasd, Chaldfean Orfa, 490 in the neighbor- 
hood of which lay the birth-place of the Abrahamidse. Beyond that 
ultimatum, positive science hazards no opinion. The theologer alone 
knows how or why Abraham's ancestry got among those hills instead 
of beginning amid the Himalayan, Cordilleran, Pyrenean, or other 
mountain ranges. 

In this connection, however differing from many uncritical sur- 
mises of their learned author, I must do Chesney the justice to say, 
that his inquiries into the geographical site of the fabled " garden of 
delight," — Eden of the Chaldees, Hadenlche of Zoroaster, and Paradise 
of the Persians — have cleared up, beyond any other writer, the diffi- 
culties of identifying what, in king James's version, 491 is a river 
which, after " it was parted, (and) became into four heads." 

The eminent chief of the "Euphrates Expedition" possessed, more 
than any preceding traveller over the same localities, the scientific 
requirements for their study ; and his careful observations have re- 
stored to rational geography, — not indeed a mythos, which even 

490 Types of Mankind, pp. 636-7; and " Genealogical Tableau of Xth Genesis." 
< 91 Genesis, II, 10; — compare Renan, Op. tit., pp. 449-56. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 573 

Origen 492 considered it "idiotic" to take in other than an allegorical 
sense, but a tract of country satisfying all the topographical exigenda 
of the brief poetic legend. " At the head of the fertile valleys of the 
Halys, Aras, Tigris, and Euphrates," as Chesney demonstrates through 
a beautiful map, 493 " we find, as might be expected, the highest moun- 
tains which were known for a great many centuries after the Flood ; 
and in this lofty region are the sources of the four great streams 
above mentioned, which flow through Eden in directions tending 
towards the four cardinal points." Hence all mystery vanishes 
through the identification of a lovely province in Armenia, whence 
the adjacent sources of four rivers stream forth — viz.: the Halys 
(Phison) northwards to the Black Sea ; the Araxes (Gihon) eastwards 
to the Caspian ; the Tigris (Hiddehel, as our translators foolishly spell 
Ha-DiKLe, the-Digle ; ed-Didjle, of the present Mesopotamiaus) flow- 
ing southwards, and the Euphrates (Phrat) westwards, until, bending 
towards each other, these two rivers unite and fall into the Persian 
Gulf through the Shut-el-arab. 

Being almost the only people whose geographical origin can now 
be determined within a few leagues of space, it may be well to 
strengthen this assertion from other quarters; after remarking that the 
starting-place of the Abrahamidse (or high-landers), before they became 
Hebrews ( Yonderers, subsequently to journeying westward beyond the 
Euphrates), falls naturally within the zoological province allotted by 
Agassiz 494 to the Syro-Iranian fauna of the European realm. 

Mackay 495 has thrown together some of the best German authorities 
on the "mythical geography of Paradise," which substantiate these 
and my former remarks on Arpha-kasd. 

"Among the places locally distinguished by the name of Eden 
was a hill district of northern Assyria or Media, called Eden in 
Thelasar (2 Kings xix, 12; JEzek. xxvii, 23 — Gesen. Lex. p. 60, 
1117 ; Winer, B. W. B., I, 380 ; H, 704). This Thelasar or Ellasar 
(Gen. xiv) is conterminous with Ptolemy's 'Arrapachitis (meaning 
either 'Chaklfean fortress,' Ewald, Geschiehte, I, 333 ; or, 'Aryapaks- 
chata,' bordering upon Arya or Iran, Von Bohlen, Genesis, 137), and 
with the plain of the ancient city Rages or Ragau (Judith, I, 6, 15), 
where the Assyrian monarch overcame the Median king Arphaxad. 
Rai, in several Asiatic tongues, was a name for Paradise (Von Bohlen, 

492 Peri-Archon, lib. IV, c. 2 ; Huet, Origeniana, p. 167. 

493 The Expedition for the survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris (1835-7) ; London, 1850, 
I, pp. 266-80 : II, 1-60 ; and " Map of the countries situate between the rivers Nile and 
fndus." 

49i "Provinces of the Animal World" — Types of Mankind, pp. Ixvii-iii, Ixxviii, and map; 
also, pp. 112-15, 116-17. 

»s Progress of the Intellect, London, 8vo, 1850; 1, pp. 39-44. 



574 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

Genesis, 27), and both Eai and Arphaxad, or ArrapacMtis, occur in 
the personal genealogy of Heber (Reu is Ragan in the Septuagint). 
It has been ingeniously surmised tbat the genealogy from Shem to 
Abrabam is in part significant of geographical localities, or successive 
stations occupied by the Hebrews in the progress of migration from 
Borne point in the north-east of Asia, from which tradition extended 
in a divergent circle as from the mythical Eerieya of the Zend-avesta 
(Ewald, Geschichte Israel, 316, 333, 336). In Hebrew tradition, as in 
that of the Indians and Persians, this region was immemorially 
sacred." ~No scholar at all acquainted with the biblical exegesis 
pretends any longer to recognize, in the misspelled name Arphaxad 
(copied by the English translators from the Greek version^, an indi- 
vidual personage, but merely a geographical name ARP7ja-KaSD. 
Tbus Bunsen: 496 "Arpakhskad (the men of Arrapakhitis), after having 
gone in the person of Eber into Mesopotamia, pass in the person of 
Abraham into Palestine (Canaan). * * * ISTow, as to Arpakshad or 
Arrapakhitis, we know from Ptolemy that their country was situated 
between Armenia and Assyria, on the southern slopes of the Gordy- 
sean mountains, overhanging Assyria. This, therefore, we may con- 
sider as one starting-point. * * * Why should such a geographical 
origin not be expressed geographically, and why should it be mis- 
interpreted ?" 

But, although it may be still impossible to fix the earliest cradles 
of other races with the same precision, and within an equally-small 
area, as the Jewish, history enables us to eliminate a great many 
others from consideration when we treat of the zoological province 
they have latterly occupied as aliens through transplantation. Thus, 
for example, every German in America is immediately restored to 
northern Europe ; every negro to Africa ; and if a Chinese, a Malay, 
or other type of man, be encountered anywhere outside of the geo- 
graphical boundary of his race, he is instantly placed back in it by 
educated reason. Hence, through this natural, almost instinctive 
process, in which history, philology and physiology, must co-operate, 
each type of mankind can be restored to its original centre, if not 
perhaps strictly of creation, at least to that of its earliest historical 
occupancy ; beyond which point human knowledge stands at fault : 
but none of these sciences, by any possibility, carries back a negro 
to the Caucasus, traces a Kelt to the Andes, refers a Jew to the Altai, 
transfers a Pawnee to the Alps, a Yukagir to the mountains of the 
Moon, or an Australian to Mount Ararat, as the respective birth- 

496 Christianity and Mankind, their beginning and prospects, London, 8vo, 1854: III, p. 179, 
180, 191. Cf. also Gesenii Thesaurus, Lipsise, 18^9; I, p. 153; voce tpx- 



THE POLTGENISTS. 575 

places of these persons. Thauraaturgy alone claims to perform such 
miracles ; ethnology ignores them altogether. 

"When each type of man is thus replaced in the natural province 
of his origin, we can, by taking a map of the earth, indicate in colors 
several centres, within and around each of which the group of 
humanity traced to it seems — the theological point of view being, in 
this discussion, left aside as obsolete — aboriginally to have clustered. 
Their number I do not pretend to guess at ; there may be 3, 5, 7, or 
8, though less, I think, than a dozen primitive centres ; but, under 
such aspects, which limited space now precludes my justifying by 
argument or examples, it will probably be found (by those who for 
their own instruction may choose to test the problem as patiently as 
curiosity has led me to do for mine), that history, comparative physi- 
ology and philology, will harmonize completely with the zoological 
theory of several centres, and prove Prof. Agassiz's view to be irre- 
fragable, viz : that mankind and certain mammalia were originally 
subject to the same laws of distribution. 

To apply this doctrine to languages : A given number of such 
natural provinces being experimentally determined through induc- 
tion, and then marked off by colored spots, each representing a 
typical group of homogeneous languages, upon a Mercator's chart ; 497 
if each one of these groups be taken separately as a point of departure 
in the eccentrical radiations of its own master-tongue, it will then be 
recognized, with the ingenious traveller Waldeek, 498 that languages 
may be compared to circles ; the primitive, or aboriginal, speech forming 
in each the centre. The farther such tongue advances towards the 
circumference, the more it loses in originality ; the tangent, that is to 
say, the point at which it encounters another language (radiating 
likewise from its own circle) is the place where it begins to undergo 
alterations, and commences the formation of a mixed idiom. By and 
by, a third language, also in process of spiral giration outwards upon 
its own axis, intersects either one of the two preceding or the point 
of union betwixt both. Under such circumstances, it will be seen (and 
might be represented on the Map in shades of color) that the " copia 
verborum" always, and the grammatical construction frequently, of 

49 ' Among attempts made at an "Ethnographical Map of the World," according to reli- 
gious belief, occupations, &c, I would particularly commend Ravenstein's large sheet 
(Reynolds, Strand, London) ; but all these represent the distribution of mankind at the 
present day ; whereas my conception refers to that of different human types at the earliest 
historical point of view (parallel with Egyptian pyramids 5000 years ago). Such a map 
has not been published yet; owing chiefly, I think, to a prevalent dogma, that, inasmuch as 
all humanity commenced upon Mount Ararat, any other system would be too profane for 
remunerative sales. 

498 Voyage Pillor. el Archeol. in Yucatan, Paris, folio, 1837 ; p. 24. 



576 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

three distinct languages, thereby become more or less interblended. 
Again, in course of time, some elements of a fourth, a fifth, or even 
of more, languages, originating in other centres, may be infiltrated 
into, or superimposed upon, this tripartite basis at certain points. Now, 
to analyze the component parts of this mass, and to carry back each 
organically-diverse tongue to its pristine centre, is the true office of 
antiquarian philology ; and herein consists the most glorious applica- 
tion of this science, regarded as the handmaiden, not the mistress, 
of "Ethnology," which term ought to represent the judicious union 
of all sciences bearing upon the study of Man. 

By way of exemplifying that such fusions have really taken place 
among languages, I would instance the Constantinopolitan Turkish, 
or present Osmanlee dialect- Originally Altaic in geographical deri- 
vation, the Turkish type, barred by the Himalayan range from much 
influence over Hindostan, and (save in the desperate alternative of 
flight or extermination undergone by what remains of Turkish among 
the hybrid Yakuts) shrinking from that Siberian cold which consti- 
tutes the mundane happiness of the Arctic-men (Samoyeds, Tchut- 
chis, Eskimaux, &c), radiated towards China on the east and Media 
on the west. Driven away from the flowery empire after prolonged 
onslaughts, the Turkish hordes — bringing with them, as their only 
trophies, a few Chinese words in their vocabulary, and some Chinese 
women in their harems — struggled for many ages in efforts to cross 
the Arian, or Persian, barrier, which arrested their march towards 
Europe. At such epochs was it that, in Persic history, the Turks 
were first called Aniranians, and latterly Turanians ; during all these 
periods of encampment, never failing to add Mongolian, Seythic, and 
Arian, females to the Chinese that already garnished their tented 
seraglios. They absorbed abundant Persian vocables into their 
speech in the interim ; and, through amalgamation with higher types 
(essentially Caucasian), their homely features began to acquire Eu- 
ropean proportion. Finally, as Osmanlees, we find them making 
Istambool their terrestrial paradise — the fairest of Arabia's, Cireas- 
sia's, and Hellas's daughters becoming their "spolia opima" for four 
centuries ; thereby polishing the Turkish form to such degree, that 
even the Bostanjees (gardeners), and Cayikjees (boatmen), of modern 
Byzantium now frequently rival Alcibiades in personal beauty. By 
way, however, of polygamic re-vindication, the politics of 1854-6 
guarantee, at least for the next generation, further improvements at 
Galata and Scutari ; only, this time, the manly cohorts of Britain, 
France, and Sardinia, by reversing the gender, have secured Ottoman 
melioration through the female line ; and sculpture looks forward 
hopefully to a liberal supply from Turkey of torsi for Apollos. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 577 

"Pari passu " with Turkish improvements in the physique, owing 
to amalgamation with higher races, has run the history of their lan- 
guage. Of yore in Asia as barbarous and limited in vocabulary as 
an Eskimo's, the Osmanlee speech has become in euphony most 
beautiful ; and through its inherent capacity of expansion, aided by 
absorption of foreign roots, unbounded; because upon a given mono- 
syllable, stolen no matter whence, the Turkish verb can agglutinate 
just what sense it pleases. Thus, supposing that recent contact with 
English hospitals should have impressed upon the Ottoman ear the 
syllable "sick," as relic of the valetudinarian's phrase "I am sick," 
the Turk can immediately, through the form sick-mek, by adding ish, 
obtain a reciprocal verb sick-ish-mek, "to be sick with one another;" 
or extend it even to siek-ish-dir-il-mek, " to be brought to be sick 
with one another;" and so oil through thirty-six forms of conjuga- 
tion; 499 in which the alien monosyllable "sick" will henceforward 
continue to play as great a part, while Turks endure, as if it had 
been native Turanian. 

The Ottomans, therefore, exhibit in their present speech all the 
historical radiations from their Altaic centre. At first exclusively 
Turanian, their language contracted some Sinie peculiarities ; and 
then so many Arian (Persian) vocables and inflexions, — followed, 
after their conversion to Islamism, by such an abundance of Semitic 
(Arabic) roots — that the more a polite speaker introduces Persian and 
Arabic into his discourse, the higher is an Osmanlee diplomatist's 
estimation of such person's culture. 500 The modern Persian language 
presents a similar superposition of Turanian and Semitic forms upon 
an Arian tongue. 

This principle of primitive centres of speech has been victoriously 
proved for Semitic languages by Eenan, and for Malayan by Craw- 
furd ; and it is even exemplified in our bastard English tongue, 
although its chief absorptions are Indo-Germanic, except in foreign 
substantives imported by commercial intercourse from other centres 
all over the world; as may be seen in De Vere's 501 capital book. 
Another method, not altogether new and somewhat defective in 
technical illustration, has just been proposed by Dr. David F. Wein- 
land (before the American Association for the advancement of Sci- 

499 Max Mullek, op. cit.. pp. 111-4; and Holdermann's Grammaire Turque, Constanti- 
nople, 1730, pp. 25-8. 

500 Recollection of Baron de Tott's work, read when I began a slight study of Turkish at 
Cairo, 1832-4, su B f;ests reference to some very happy illustrations of this mixture of three 
tongues given by Vim ; but I no longer possess, nor know where to find, his book for 
citation. 

501 Outlines of Compar Hive Philology, New York, 1853. 

37 



578 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

ence, 502 " on the names of Animals with reference to Ethnology"), for 
tracking back the name of a given animal to its primitive zoological 
province, and hence deducing the nation that first occupied such 
centre. There is not the slightest doubt of its logical correctness, and 
I lament that space is now lacking to corroborate it by other exam- 
ples ; but my brief philological digression, save on one point, must 
be closed ; and with the less regret because our able collaborator, M. 
Alfred Maury, has covered the philological ground of ethnology in 
Chapter I. of this volume. 

The facts most obnoxious to the modern evangelical hypothesis of 
the unity of all languages, and which philological monogenism, with 
conspiring unanimity, either slurs over, or suppresses, lie in those 
numerous cases where the type of man, now found speaking a given 
language, bears no relation physically, or through its geographical 
origin, to the speech which, derived from a totally-distinct centre, it 
employed as its vernacular. Thus, as a ready instance, negroes 
transported to America from Africa (their own African idioms being 
wholly lost within two generations) have spoken Dutch in New 
York State, German in Pennsylvania, Swedish in Delaware, Euglish 
from Maine to Louisiana; where, in a single city, New Orleans, 
they still converse in French, Spanish, or English, according to the 
domestic language of their proprietors. Continuing through the 
Antilles, among which, on different islands, French, Danish, Span- 
ish, English dialects, and even Irish with the brogue,^ 3 are tortured 
by negro voices in the absence of any colloquial African tongue, we 
find them speaking Caribsean dialects along the Mosquito shores, 
Portuguese in Brazilian cities, and the lingoa geral, m or current 
Indian idioms of the country, throughout South America. In 
parallel manner, all along Barbary, Egypt, and Syria, imported 
negroes talk only in Arabic; while in Asia Minor, and in the Morea, 
I have met with many wholly ignorant of any language but Turkish 
in the former case, and Greek in the latter. Here, then, are familiar 
instances where human faunas of the African realm would, by the 
mere philologer reasoning upon a few vocabularies, be assigned to 
the Indogermanic, the Semitic, or the Turanian groups of known 
Asiatic origin! Against such "petitiones principii," Desmoulins 

502 Reported in New York Herald, Aug. 26th, 1856; and perhaps as regards foreign pro- 
per names incorrectly. 

503 Types of Mankind, p. 723. 

604 Aug. de St. Hilaire, Voyages dans les provinces de Rio de Janeiro el de Minas Geraes, 
Paris, 8vo, 1830; I, pp. 424-6; II, 49-57: — Rdoendas, Voy. Pittor. dans le Bresil, Paris, 
1833 ; II, pp. 3, 27-34. 



THE POLTGENISTS. -579 

was the first to raise his voice; 505 followed by Morton, 506 D'Avezac, 607 
Pickering, 508 and others ; but inasmuch as some ethnographers do 
not appear to have laid sufficient stress on the multitude of these 
contradictions inherent in the mere philological school, I will enu- 
merate a few of the more striking instances, beginning with the 
oldest historical nation, that of Egypt. 

The Fellah of the present day has recovered the type of his 
primitive ancestry {vide supra, pi. I and II, and p. 109) ; yet his 
language has become Arabic instead of the ancient Hamitic, which, 
in the ratio of its antiquity, frees itself from Shemite influence. 509 
The Jews, spread over the world, their primitive Aramasen tongue 
and its successor the Hebrew being colloquially forgotten, adopt as 
their own the language of every race among whom they happen to 
sojourn ; yet, owing to intermarriage exclusively among their own 
race, their true type has been preserved independently of such 
transplantations — I allude to that of more or less sallow complexion, 
black hair and eyes, aquiline nose, and high but receding forehead. 
Nevertheless, it would be an illusion to suppose that, even since the 
cessation of intermixture with Canaanites, Persians, and Greeks, 
down to their expulsion from Palestine after the fall of Jerusalem, 
the Israelites have been able to avoid mingling their blood with that 
of other races, to the extent which rabbinical superstition may claim 
or that Christians habitually concede. This is accounted for in the 
vicissitudes of their history during our middle ages ; and is mainly 
owing to the proselyting furor of the Inquisition. On the one 
hand, forced conversions, in Spain and Portugal especially, often 
compelled Hebrews to dissimulate their repugnance to Gentile 
unions, as well as to disguise their secret adherence to Judaism ; 
and this, sometimes, with such consummate skill that, in 1665, the 
Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem was discovered to have been a Jew 
all his life ! 510 On the other, polygamy was ever free to the Israel- 
ite, 511 until abandoned throughout Europe in submission to Catholic 
laws. The historical instances are so numerous of modern Jewish 
alliances with Gentiles, that it would require many pages to illus- 

505 Races Humaines, pp. 366-50. 

M6 "Inedited MSS.," Types of Mankind, pp. 311, 322-3: — Ghddon, Olia JEgyptiaca, 
pp. 78-9. 

s°» Bulletin de la Soc. de Oeographie, XIV, 1840; p. 228. 

«e Races, pp. 277-8. 

H» Birch, Crystal Palace Hand-book, 1856; pp. 249-52. 

5W Basnaoe, Hisl. and Relig. of the Jews, fol. London, 1708 ; p. 705. To Basnage, who 
may justly be termed the continuer of Josephus, I must refer the reader for proofs of all 
my assertions. 

mi Op. cil., pp. 469-70. 



580 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

trate them fully ; but their result is, that the votaries of Judaism 
may be divided into two broadly-marked and distinct types, viz : 
the one above mentioned, and another distinguished by lank and 
tall frame, «lear blue eye, very white and freckled skin, and yellow- 
reddish hair. 

Not merely in Barbary, Arabia, Bokhara, Hindostan and China, 
have numberless converts to Judaism mingled their blood with the 
pure Abrahamic stock ; but, at several periods of temporary pros- 
perity, and in various parts of Europe also, during the middle ages, 
Indo-germanic and Sclavonian families, adopting Mosaic institutes, 
freely intermixed with Israelites ; and hence, through amalgamation, 
arise all noticeable divergencies from the well-known standard type. 
Poland seems to be the focus of this fusion of Jews with the German 
and Sarmatian races ; 512 but some descendants of these multifarious 
unions, exiled from Spain, form at this day large classes in Algeria ; 
and, whilst they are rare in Egypt and Syria, I can attest their fre- 
quency at Rhodes, Smyrna, and Constantinople. But, as a special 
instance of the false deductions that would be drawn from them 
(were philology not to be controlled by physiological criteria combined 
with history), while at Rhodes and Smyrna the outdoor language of 
these Israelites is Greek, and at Constantinople Turkish, — their 
domestic speech is Spanish, and their literature in the same tongue 
printed with Hebrew letters ! The rationale is, they descend from 
the Jews driven out of Spain during the XVIth century, where they 
must have absorbed a goodly poi'tion of Gothic, or perhaps Vandal, 
blood prior to their exode. Indeed, upon surveying the infinitude 
of diverse languages, habits, dresses, and contradictory institutions, 
contracted by the Jewish type in every country of the earth, and the 
consequent clashings of each national synagogue upon points of reli- 
gious doctrine among Khahhamim educated in different countries, 
should wealth ever enable Europeanized Jews to re-purchase Jerusa- 
lem, and to collect their brethren there from all regions of the earth, 
I much fear the result would be but a repetition of the " confusion 
"of Babel." Apart from identity of physical conformation, subject to 
the exceptions above noticed, there could be but one test (and that 
latterly made doubtful) 513 through which such incongruous elements 
could fraternize; and like a Council at Ephesus, this Sanhedrim 

612 Bokt de St. Vincent, Anthropologic de VAfrique Fran$aise, 1845, pp. 12, 15, 17-8: — 
Rozet, Voyage dans la Regence d' Alger, Paris 4to, 1833; II, pp. 210-35. The learned author 
of Genesis of the Earth and of Man (1856, pp. 69, 123) supposes that the frequency of these 
fair-skinned yellow-haired Jews in the East " has not been mentioned by any writer." Here 
are two witnesses in the meanwhile. 

513 Beetherand (Medecine el Hygiene des Arabes, Paris, 1855; p. 313, note), on changes 
in Circumcision. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 581 

would soon dissolve in uproar, affording to Gentiles a spectacle 
similar to, and edifying as, that of the Conventicle of Dordrecht : 

" Dordrachi Synodus nodus. 
Chorus integer seger. 
Conventus ventus, 
Sessio stramen, Amen." 

Very singular is it, nevertheless, that the people whose xenolasia, 
or hatred to foreigners, has been so instinctive since their post-Baby- 
lonian history, should have become in language the most cosmopo- 
litan. Thus Josephus says, that they who learned many tongues 
were not esteemed in Judea ; and Origen testifies that, in his time, 
the Jews did not trouble themselves about Grecians or their tenets. 
In the Mishna, Jewish children are forbidden to acquire Greek. 614 
" The postille, annexed to the text of the Misnah, contains a maledic- 
tion, pronounced against him who keeps a hog, or teaches his son 
G-reeh; as if it was equally impure to feed an unclean beast, and to 
give men a good education :" but exile forced the Rabbis to relax 
such inhibitions, during the 11th century, after R. Solomon of Bar- 
celona; and now it would be difficult to define Israelitish character- 
istics more aptly than by " Judaismus polyglottus," did not the ori- 
ginal Abrahamic type, — owing to a recognized law in breeding, that 
the many, effacing by degrees the few, invariably return to their 
normal physique — vindicate its right to be called the purest, cceteris 
paribus, of all nations upon earth. 

Again, among Shemitish examples, there are multitudes of pure- 
blooded Arabs in Affghanistan and Bokhara, few of whom except 
their Moolahs preserve their Arabian dialect ; ™ but have adopted 
the alien idioms of the country, whilst preserving their Arabic phy- 
sique during about 1000 years. In Asia, these metamorphoses of 
tongue coupled with preservation of type are innumerable. There 
are white Kalmuks (Telenggout) in Siberia, whose physiognomy is 
wholly Mongol : but speaking Turkish, they are evidently a Mongo- 
lian family which, losing its own tongue, has adopted a Turkish dia- 
lect. 516 If one were to attempt a specification of the hybrid grada- 

611 Basnage, pp. 405, 608-9. A very singular question, bearing upon cranioscopy, is 
asked in the old Talmud (Sckabbas), viz.: "Quare sunt capita Babyloniorum rotunda 
[MeGeLGiLOTV] ?" — Joh. Buxtorfi p., Lexicon Chaldaicum Talm. H Rabbin., 1629, p. 1435. 
The fact, is (supra, Chap. II, figs. 39, 40), they are round. 

615 Khanikoff, Bokhara, its Amir and People, transl. De Bode, London, 8vo., 1845; pp. 
67-80: — Malcolm, History of Persia, London, 4to., 1815; p. 277: — Morier, Second Jour- 
ney through Persia, London, 4to., 1818; i. pp. 47-8. On the absurdity of Jews being the 
ancestors of the Tadjiks of Bokhara, or the Pushtaneh of Cabul, read Kennedy, Question 
of the supposed Lost Tribes of Israel, London, 8vo, 1855, p. 51. 

516 Klaproth, Magazin Asiatique, No. I. : — See all kinds of similar transpositions between 
race and tongue in Desmoulins, passim. 



582 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

tions in blood and languages that exist around the circumferences 
of Arctic, Ouralian, Altaic, Thibetan, Daourian, and other stocks, 
wherein one race has exchanged its language, whilst more or less 
perpetuating its own race-character, a volume of citations would 
barely cover the contradictory instances ; but the exactitude of a 
competent authority's, 517 Count John Potocki's, experience would be 
thoroughly confirmed: — "but I also encounter [at Astrakan] new 
difficulties. I behold men with flat faces, who seem to belong to 
the same people; but these men speak different languages. On the 
other hand, men with dissimilar features express themselves in the 
same idiom ; and all pretend to be the veritable Tatars of Tchinghiz- 
khan !" The same phenomena, upon contrasting ancient and 
modern times especially, meet the eye everywhere in Europe. "For 
example," says Potocki, 518 whilst laying down an admirable series of 
rules for unravelling these complex meshes wherein the tongue con- 
tradicts the race, or vice versa, "the Tatars of Lithuania have pre- 
served their little eyes and their religion ; but they have lost their 
language, and no longer speak anything but Polish : at the same 
time that Latham, 519 in whose excellent compilation other instances 
occur, establishes that — "a. There is a considerable amount of 
Dgrian blood amongst certain populations whose speech is Sclavonic. 
b. There is a considerable amount of Sclavonic blood among certain 
populations whose speech is German." Haartman 520 has shown that 
the Carelians, hitherto classed as Finns, belonged to a totally dis- 
tinct family, whose lost language " has been superseded by the Fin- 
nic:" ISTiebuhr 521 proves that the Epirots "changed their language, 
without conquest or colonization, into Greek:" Maury indicates the 
diversities of races and tongues now becoming absorbed into French, 
whilst still preserving distinctive marks of separate race-charac- 
ters: 522 Keith Johnston's exquisite "Ethnographic Map of Great Bri- 
tain and Ireland," with its letter-press, 523 exhibits how pre-Xeltic, 
Celtic, and Teutonic differences of blood and languages are gradu- 
ally merging themselves into a common vernacular, the English; 
although the original distinctions of race still survive countless inter- 

617 Voyage dans les Steps de I'Astraian et du Caucase. Eistoire Primitif des Peuples qui ont 
habile anciennement ces Contre'es: Nouveau Periple du Pont Euxin — with notes by Klaproth ; 
Paris, 8vo., 1829; ii. p. 52: — See Reckbekg (Les Peuples de la Russie, Paris, fol. ; Discoura 
preliminaire, pp. 3, 6-13) for the various families occupying the Russian Empire = ninety- 
nine nations. 

sis Op. til., i. p. 12. 

519 Native Races of the Russian Empire, London, I2mo., 1854; p. 23. 

5M> Transactions of the R. Soc. of Stockholm, 1847. 1 

5=1 History of Rome, i. p. 37. j " Morton s medited MSS -" 

622 Ethnologic Ancie'nne de la France, Paris, 18mo., 1853, pp. 22-32. 

523 Physical Atlas, fol. 1855, PI. 33. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 583 

marriages : and Pickering, 524 struck with linguistic anomalies beheld 
in the eleven races discerned by him in his voyage round the world, 
at tbe same time that he furnishes other illustrations, judiciously ob- 
serves — "Although languages indicate national affiliation, their 
actual distribution is, to a certain extent, independent of physical 
race. Confusion has sometimes arisen, from not giving due atten- 
tion to this circumstance ; and indeed, the extension, or the impart- 
ing of languages, is a subject which has received very little attention. 
Writers sometimes reason as if nations went about in masses, the 
strong overcoming the weak, and imposing at once their customs, 
religion, and languages on the vanquished;" when the contrary has 
been more frequently exemplified : and he shows that in the cases of 
Africans transplanted involuntarily to the United States, Hayti, and 
St. Vincent, " we have three examples, where one physical race of 
men has succeeded to the languages and institutions of another." 

In general, the fusion between languages originating from different 
centres, is parallel with amalgamations between races of distinct 
stocks brought together from widely separated countries. Among 
familiar examples, wherein English thus struggles for mastery (apart 
from Malta against Italian- Arabic, and in the Ionian Islands against 
Venitianized Greek), may be mentioned Pitcairn's Islanders (by 
this time probably moved on to Van Diemen's Land), whither the 
"Bounty's" mutineers, carrying off Polynesian females, formed a 
race of half-castes : the small, if prolific, family at Tristan d'Acunha, 
compounded between nigritian women from St. Helena and British 
marines; — and the amalgamizing tendency of colonists at New 
Zealand, 525 which introduces a third element of hybridity amid a 
people that, at the time of their earliest relations with Europeans, 
were already (strange to say) composed of two different stocks ; the 
one fair, and unquestionably Polynesian ; the other black, either 
Harfoorian or Papuan ; whose union had produced various shades of 
mulattoes, — to the astonishment of Crozet, 526 when he saw "trois 
especes d'hommes, des blancs, des noirs, et des basanes ou jaunes," 
at Cook's Port of Islands. Some day, perhaps, a philologer, who 
disregards history and race-character, will establish perfect unity 
among Pitcairn, Tristan d'Acunha, and New Zealand, humanity, on 
the ground of their natives speaking English ! 

Thus, one might travel onward, by the aid of literary sources, from 

» M United Slates Explor. Exped., 1848, fol., IX, pp. 277-9. 

625 Angas, New Zealand illustrated, London, fol., 1846. 

5K Nouvtau Voyage a la Mer du Sud, with Capt. Marion in the " Mascarin" and " Castries," 
Paris, 8vo, 1783; pp. 51-2, 137-8: — confirmed by Chamisso, in Kotzebue's Voy. of Disco- 
very into the South Sea, &c. ; tranl. Lloyd, London, 8vo, 1821 ; III, p. 290. The Tonga 
Islanders afford a parallel illustration. 



584 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

country to country, all over the world (as indeed my notes can show 
that I have done) to prove that there is scarcely any spot remaining 
now where amalgamation between different races has not taken 
place ; and, consequently, where philology, if applied without know- 
ledge of these physical facts, must often lead to egregious error. I 
must content myself, however, with succinct references, under each 
of the 54 heads of our "Ethnographic Tableau," to authorities, 
through which an inquirer can satisfy himself upon the truth of this 
assertion. The converse of our proposition will, moreover, substan- 
tiate its correctness, viz. : that, wherever there has been no amalga- 
mation of races, a type will perpetuate its language and its blood, 
irrespectively of climatic influences. Many islands and peninsulas 
would furnish illustrations in different regions of the earth, but none 
more fortified with such historical guarantees, and for so long a period 
as thirty generations, as hyperborean Iceland. 

Sixty-five years, that is about a. d. 795, before its re-discovery by 
the Norwegian Floke in 861, Iceland had been occasionally visited by 
Irish anchorites from the Feroe Isles ; 527 the latter being known to the 
learned monks of Ireland prior to 725. Colonization of the former 
island by Scandinavians commenced as early as 862 ; 528 and thither 
flocked the Northmen in such numbers from Halogaland, Drontherrn, 
Nordenfield, Nommedalen, &c, together with some cognate families 
from Sweden, Scotland, the Hebrides, and Ireland, that, by 920, the 
country was already populous ; and the first historical census of 1100 
showed about " 3860 principal heads of families." Unspeakable 
disasters from plagues, volcanoes, famines, and diminutions of tem- 
perature, have been their lot; especially when cut off from their last 
Greenland offshoots™ by the ice, during 1406-8. During nearly 
1000 years pure-blooded Northmen have withstood, remote from the 
rest of the world, Iceland's inhospitable climate, and, free from 
amalgamation with any other race, as a consequence, still speak 
the old Norse as purely as Ingolfr, the first actual settler in 862. 6M 
Nevertheless, imbued, since their forcible conversion, 981-1000, with 
biblical traditions, even these Icelanders have hitched their genealo- 
gies on to the Semitic chart called Xth Genesis ! Jon Arason, bishop 

421 Letronne, Recherches geographiques el critiques sur le Lime "de Mensura orbis Terrse," 
compose en Irelande, au commencement du 9 me siecle par Dicuil ; Paris, 1814; pp. 131—46. 

658 Xavier Maemier, " Histoire de l'Islande," Voyage de la Commission Seienlifique du Nord, 
Corvette "Recherche," en Islande el au Groenland (1835-6); Paris, 8vo, 1840; pp. 12-191. 

529 Scokesbt, Journal of Northern Whale Fishery and West Greenland, Edinburgh, 8vo, 1823 ; 
and Gaimard, " Histoire du Voyage de la Recherche," Paris, 1838; I, p. 3. 

630 Marmier, "Litterature Islandaise," op. cit., p. 7:- — Bunsen, Discourse on Ethnology 
British Assoc, for the Adv. of Science, in "Three linguistic Dissertations," London, 1848; pp. 
278-9. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 585 

of Iceland towards the end of the 15th century, although the son of 
a peasant, "caused his genealogy to mount up in a straight line to 
the first kings of Denmark, and even to Adam. * * * It comes 
down from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Japhet, to Jafre, Jothum, 
Cyprus, Crete, Saturn, Jupiter, to Darius. At the 23d degree, we 
find Priam ; at the 25th, Throar, whom we call Thor, says the chroni- 
cler ; at the 42d, Voden or Odin ; then come the first kings of Den- 
mark; and, at the 85th, appears the name of this bishop!" 531 In such 
a desolate country, amid wintry darkness extending to 21 hours per 
diern, time must have been wearisome. Sympathy bids us respect 
the fables of a school-loving people, who, " simplex munditiis," 
composed the Edda, besides a multitude of Sagas, — generally about 
as historical as good Bishop Arason's pedigree. 532 

Icelanders, however, may challenge the rest of mankind to exhibit 
another nation upon which a thousand years have entailed neither 
change of race nor alteration of speech. Their high-caste Scandi- 
navian features, abundantly figured in portraits by Gaimard, 5JJ 
equally attest the purity of their blood and permanence of type, 
despite their long position on the Arctic circle, — where, according 
to alleged climatic action upon the human frame, and Bishop Ara- 
son's genealogical tables aforesaid, they ought to have beeome either 
Lapps or Eskimo ! 

Let it not be said, in behalf of the monogenistic view, that, in 
proportion as one recedes into antiquity, fewer languages and fewer 
races are encountered. At the age of the writer of Xth Genesis, 
within the very limited superficies embraced within his geography, 534 
the 79 nations, tribes, cities, and countries, enumerated by him, were 
already divided "after their tongues." The existence of no others 
was known to him, else more would have been recorded. Even in 
a fractional part of the world, just at the edge of the above map's 
circumference, Herodotus tells us that, in the twelve cities of Ionia 
alone, four distinct tongues were spoken ; and how Grecian traders, 
between the Volga and the Uralian range, carried with them no 
less than seven interpreters ; whilst Polybius narrates that Carthagi- 
nian mercenaries in Spain, during a mutiny, vociferated their demands 
in ten different languages. Yet, to all these chroniclers, three fourths 

531 Marmier, "Histoire," p. 323: — Compare some of the Arab genealogies collected by 
Chesney;— Op. cit., I, appendices, Tables 1-4. 

632 Ellesmere, Guide to Northern Archceology, by the R. Soc. of Northern Antiquaries of 
Copenhagen, London, 8vo, 1848, pp. 83-91. 

633 Harsher, Op. cit. From it I have selected the simple fisherman, Petur Olafsen ; No. 14 
of our Tableau : but the work contains larger likenesses of men more illustrious, perhaps, 
though not more typical. 

5 s4 Types of Mankind, pp. 549-50, Ethnol. Tableau, and Map. 



586 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

of the earth's surface were utterly unknown ! A glance over the 
annals, or monuments, of these three fourths, will prove that the 
major portion of their human inhabitants, like other genera of their 
mammalia, must have existed contemporaneously. Our last volume, 
combined with the great enhancement of authentic examples con- 
tributed by our erudite coadjutor Mr. Pulszky to this, ought to 
satisfy unbiassed doubters that it is not through the mere love of 
opposition that polygenists claim a right to demand some things 
more reasonable than dogmatic denial, before "the unity of the 
human species" can be accepted by science. 

There occurs yet another contingency that, in various countries, 
has had a certain influence in disturbing the natural order of some 
tongues, and which philologists should not altogether ignore. It is 
where, as in the French " argots," in the English " slangs," or in the 
Arabic dialect of the Awalem, a new idiom is invented. Of such, 
Oriental history presents us with many curious examples, and Euro- 
pean even to the forgery of a pretended language. Thus, in China, 
as mentioned in our former work, the Mandchou Tartar dynasty 
coined five thousand new words which they forced upon their sub- 
jects, as Champollion-Figeac says, "d'emblee et par ordonnance." 
Again, at Owyhee, about 1800, His Majesty Tamaahmaah invented 
a new language, in commemoration of the birth of a son ; but, accord- 
ing to Kotzebue, this prince happening to die, the people resumed 
their old one. There are many English colonies where, at this day, 
judicial proceedings in court, as at Malta and Corfu, can only be 
carried on in English ; and the strongest bulwark of the Ottoman 
rule, — now extinguishing itself in the exact ratio that, through amal- 
gamation, the pure Turanian blood ebbs away — was that uncom- 
promising instinct which forbade Turks to respect any language but 
the Turkish. Now, I do not mean to aver that, in any of these eases, 
counterfeits cannot be detected ; or that true philology is unable to 
discover the genuine stock from which such invention may have 
issued, so to say, by the ring of the metal. I am merely calling 
attention to very common circumstances through which the tongue 
spoken frequently contradicts the type of its speaker. 

But, to close this argument: It may be advanced by transcendental 
philology, that all these distinct tongues are comprehended within its 
laws ; that is to say, whether a transplanted negro in America speaks 
Cherokee, a Jew expatriated to Singapore adopts Malay, or a Chi- 
nese brought up at Berlin converses in German, that, nevertheless, 
these languages — American, Malayan, and Teutonic — that each 
individual has acquired; together with those idioms — African, 
Hebrew, and Sinic — which every individual has forgotten, are all 



THE POLYGENISTS. 587 

comprised within the classification "Arian, Semitic, and Turanian," 
as understood by the Bunsen-school ; and furthermore that, like 
unity in trinity, these three classes are reducible into one primeval 
speech. 

Denying the competency of any man living, in the actual state 
of science, to be considered a "philologist" if he enunciate such a 
doctrine, I must again refer to M. Maury's Chapter I. in the present 
volume for proofs that the truth lies in the contrary statement. 

Although the subject of " chronology" may be here a little out of 
place, still, in support of preceding remarks {supra, pp. 466, 469], the 
reader will not object to my intercalating the substance of Chevalier 
Bunsen's latest publication (JEgyptens Stelle, V tes Buches, 5 te Ab- 
theilung, pp. 342-59), in the only space of this volume where such 
new and interesting matter can be introduced. I am not aware that 
the work itself has yet reached this country, but owe what follows to 
the considerate kindness of our collaborator Mr. Pulszkt, through a 
private letter received here whilst finally correcting "revises." 



CHEVALIER BUNSEN'S CHEONOLOGY. 

Years before Christ. 
Origin op Mankind. 20,000 

Flood in Northern Asia — Emigration of the Arians from the valley of the 

Oxus and Jaxartes, and of the Shemites from the valley of the Tigris and 

Euphrates — between 10,000 and 11,000 

Egyptian nomes (provinces) under republican form 10,000 

But, the use of hieroglyphical writing already probable at about 12,000 

End of the republican phase in Egypt 9,086 

Bttis the Theban, 1st Priest-king 9,085 

End of the Priest-kings 7,231 

[About this time Nimeod, and a Turanian empire in Mesopotamia, &c] 

Elective kings in Egypt, from 7,230 to 5,414 

Hereditary Kings in Upper and Lower Egypt, — a double empire from 5,413 

to 3,624 

Menes, king of united Egypt B.C. 3623 



Great Chaldtean empire begins in Babylonia 

Zokoastek, between 3500 and 

Foundation of Babylon 

Tyrian chronology begins ... 

Exodus of the Israelites < 

Semiramis 1273 to 

Solomon's era 

&o. &c. 



3784 
3000 
3250 
2760 
1320 
1200 
1017 



588 



THE ilONOGENISTS AND 



CONCLUSIONS. 

PROTESTANT. 

Acts xvii, 26. Textus revisus, A. d. 1857. 

" iirotViv « i% ivo.c wav Uwg avfycliiiuv " fecitque ex uno omne (homine) 

xaroixsTv iiri tiavrds irpotfoiirou t% genus hominum inhabitare 

yns" ■ supra universam faciem ter- 

r£e _"535 



CATHOLIC. 

" ifolrtsev <re Jg Ivos *av ysmg. dvUpcovuv "Fecitque ex uno omne genus 
xaroixsh iwi ifuvrbs ffpo<r«Wou Tijs hominum inhabitare supra 

yns" universam faciem terrse." 536 



"Eiroiijff's 7& e% svos irav s^vos avdpwTrwv.' 



TEXTTJS RECEPTUS GREEK. 3 

nan cOfog dvBpunuw KarotKCtv ini 
vav to -poaciiirov I rijj yfjff." 



TEXTUS RECEPTUS LATIN." 3 

" fecitque ex uno omne genus hominum 

inhabitare supra universam faciem terrse." 



French Catholic. 5 * French Protestanl. sa 

"II a fait nattre d'un seul toute la race des "Et il a fait d'un seul sang tout le genre 

hommes, el il leur a donne pour demeure humain pour habiter sur toute l'e'tendue 

toute 1'^tendue de la terre." de la terre." 



English Catholic. 
"And hath made of one, all mankind, 

to dwell upon the whole face of the earth." 642 



1.643 

"And [he] hath made of one 
Blood [of Adam] all Na- 
tions of Men to dwell on 
all the Face of the 
Earth." 



Varianles leciiones. 

' and has made every Na- 
tion of Men of the same 
Blood," &c. 



3.5*5 
' and hath made of one 
blood all nations of men 
to dwell on all the face 
of the earth." 



THE POLTGENISTS. 



589 



English Versions of Acts xvii, 26. 546 



Wyclif, 1380. 
"and made of oon 
alle kynde of 
men to enha- 
bite on al the 
face of the 
erthe." 

(From the Latin 
Vulgate.) 



Ttndale, 1534. 

"and hath made 
of one bloud 
all nacions of 
men, for to 
dwell on all 
the face of the 
erthe." 

(From the Greek 
printed Text.) 



Cbanmer, 1539. 

"and hath made 
of one bloud 
all nacions of 
men, for to 
dwell on all 
the face of the 
earth." 

(From the Greek 
printed Text.) 



Geneva, 1557. 
"and hath made 
of one bloud 
all man kynde, 
for to dwel on 
all the face of 
the earth." 

(From the Greek 
printed Text.) 



Rheims, 1582. * 
" and he hath 
made of one al 
mankinde to 
inhabite upon 
the whole face 
of the earth." 

(From the Latin 
Vulgate.) 



Authorized," 161L 
"and hath made 
of one blood 
all nations of 
men, for to 
dwell on all 
the face of the 
earth." 
(From the Greek 
printed Text.) 



535 Novum Testament. Greece et Latine — Carolus Lachmannus reconsuit. Philippos 
Botmannus Ph. F. Greece Lectionis Auc tori tat is apposuit. BeroKni, 1850, tomus alter, 
p. 126. [Readings: — ii>5<; alone in Cod. Alex, and Vat. Cantab. Laud., and Cantab. Laud., 
Elzivir ed. 1624, and Iren^us, add the word "blood."] 

536 H KALNH AIAGHKH. Novum Testamentum Greece et Latine. In Antiquis Tesiibus 
Textum Versionis Vulgatm Latince indagavit Lectionesque variantes Stephani et Griesbacckii 
notavit V. S. Venerabili Jager in consilium adhibito Constantinv/s Tischendorf (Editio DD. 
Affre Archiepiscopo Parisiensi dicata) : — Paris, 1842, p. 225. [Readings: — "St. [Stephen] 

Gb. [Greisbach], lvos ai/iarog jrav Wfas et Ini nav Trptfutdn'Oi'."] 

537 Harwood's Neio Testament (without points), London, 12mo, 1776, I, p. 342. 

538 Scholz, Novum Testamentum Greecee, Lipsiee, 1836, IT, p. 67. 

539 Bibliorum Sacrorum Vulgatee Versionis editio, Paris, 4to (Didot), 1785, p. 405. 

540 La Sainte Bible, traduite sur la Vulgate, par Le Maistre de Sact, Paris ed., 1849, 
Nouv. Test. p. 148. 

541 L a Sainte Bible, — revue sur les originaux et retouche* dans le langage, par David 
Martin, Ministre du Saint-Evangile, a Utrecht; Paris (Didot), 1839 — Nouv. Test., p. 178. 

542 "The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate"— Old Testament, Doway, 1609; 
New Testament, Rheims, 1582 (approved by the most reverend Doctor Troy, R. C. A. D.), 
— Dublin, 4to, 1816, p. 193. 

543 Whitbt, Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament, London, 4to, 6th ed., 1744; 
1, p. 694. 

544 Purver, New and Literal Translation, &c, with notes, London, 8vo, 1764, II, p. 171. 

545 Sharpe, The New Testament translated from GriesbacWs Text, London, 12mo, 2d ed., 
p. 257. 

546 "The English Hexapla, exhibiting the sis important English Translations of the New 
Testament Scriptures," London, 4to, 1841, voce "Acts xvii, 26." 

[Have been collated for Texts and Versions; and examined for Variants, Commentaries, 
and Notes — 

Le Jay's Polyglotte, Paris, fol., 1645, "Acta Apostolorum," V, part 2d, p. 120: — Walton's 
Biblia Polyglotta, Oxford, fol., 1657, V, pp. 588-9: — Greisbachii Novum Testamentum, 
Cantabrigise, 8vo, 1809, p. 329: — Id., Paris, 18mo, p. 338: — Wetstein and Griesbach's 
N. Test., London, 12mo, 1808, sub voce: — Adam Clarke's Bible, N. Test., London, 1836, I, 
p. 855: — Albert Barnes's "Notes, explanatory and practical, on the New Testament" 
{Cobbin's reprint), London, 4to, 1848, p. 485: — Scott's Bible, III, p. 335: — Henry's Bible, 
III, p. 613: — "Society for promoting Christian Knowledge's" Bible, "cum privilegio," 
Oxford, 4to, 1817, II, sub voce: — Bloomfield, "Greek Testament, with English notes," 
London, 4to, 1843, 5th ed., p. 639: — Alford, "The Greek Testament: with a critically 
revised Text," &c, Cambridge, 8vo, 1854, II, pp. 180-1: — &c, &c, &c] 



590 THE MONOGElSriSTS AND 

Whatever may be, out of England, the general estimation in 
which her Universities are held for Hebraical scholarship, none will 
dare say that the country, which gave birth to a Bentley and a 
Porteus, has, in solid Greek learning, ever lacked a man to stand, 
like Jonadab the son of Rechab, "before (IeHOuaH) for ever.' 
The difference between the last century and the present, in English 
Hellenic studies, seems chiefly to lie in the fact that, having ex- 
hausted extant literary sources in Grecian drama and philosophy, 
the critical apparatus derived from those honored pursuits is now 
becoming intensely directed towards the verbal restoration of the 
original books composing the New Testament; and the names of 
Davidson, Alford, Sharpe, and Tregelles, are the well-known 
representatives of this new school, in different phases of its ten- 
dency. 

The first-mentioned, speaking of the Palestinic period some 1800 
years ago, allows : " The age was one of illiterate simplicity. The 
apostles themselves were from the humblest ranks of society. Their 
abilities and education were tolerably alike. * * * The age was 
illiterate. They belonged, for the most part, to a class of society 
unpractised in the art of writing." 547 The second frankly avows: "I 
do not hesitate to say that [verbal inspiration] being thus applied, 
its effect will be to destroy altogether the credibility of our Evange- 
lists." 518 The third published, last year, that most useful little book, 
Notes introductory to the New Testament. And the fourth uses the 
following language: "It is a cause for thankfulness that the common 
Greek text [of the New Testament] is no worse than it is ; but it is 
a cause for humiliation (and with sober sadness do I write the word) 
that Christian translators have not acted with a more large-souled 
and intelligent honesty." 549 

The foregoing remarks arise from the imperative necessity of 

547 Introduction to the New Testament, &c, London, 1848, I, pp. 408, 417. Jo. Lamius 
(De erudilione Apostolorum. Liber singularis in quo multa quce ad primilivorum Christianorum 
liieras, doctrinas, scripta, placita, sludia, eondilionem, censum, mores, el rilus attinent, exponun- 
tur et illustrantur : editio altera, 4to, Florentise, anno MDCCLXVI, "Censorious permitten- 
tibus," pp. 477-991), — publishing in Italy when the Italian Catholic mind had not yet 
endured a "Francesco," a "Maffei," or a "Boniba," — had long previously established 
apostolic incapacity in the republic of letters. As one among the "workies" — and I say 
it with pride — to tread down, and keep down, what embers of intolerance may yet smoke 
in my adopted country, I can join in gratulation with citizens of our republic of America — 
mais (ici) nous avons change 1 tout cela." 

648 Greek Testament: with a critically revised Text, &c, London, 1854; I, Prolegomena, p. 
20. Alford (II, p. 181) expressly cautions us to read Acts xvii, 26 — "Not, 'hath made 
of one blood,' &c, as E. V. but 'caused evert nation of men (sprung) of one blood,' 
&c. See Matt, v, 32, Mark vii, 37." 

549 Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament, London, 1855, p. 267. 



THE POL YGEISTI ST S. 591 

vindicating, once for all, in ethnological discussion, the accuracy of 
my colleague's and my own observations in the joint volume which 
preceded the present." 660 

Those assertions having been flatly contradicted, Dr. JSTott, 551 
when resuming the subject, stated, "The word blood is an interpola- 
tion, and not to be found in the original texts. The word blood has 
been rejected by the Catholic Church, from the time of St. Jerome 
to the present hour. The text of Tischendorf is regarded, I believe, 
generally as the most accurate Greek text known, and in this the 
word ' blood ' does not appear. I have at hand a long list of authori- 
ties to the same effect ; but as it is presumed no competent authority 
will call our assertion in question, it is needless to cite them. The 
verse above alluded to in Acts should, therefore, read : — 

" 'And hath made of one all races (genus) of men,' &c. 

" The word blood is a gloss ; and we have just as much right to 
interpolate one form, one substance, one nature, one responsibility, or 
anything else, as blood." 

Many incompetent authorities, nevertheless, still continuing to 
question my collaborator's correctness, I feel it incumbent upon my- 
self to prove that he was perfectly right. I hope the foregoing array 
of texts and references, among which is Tischendorf's much-prized 
authority, will obviate future discussion of others amongst them- 
selves. It will forever with myself. 

But, so swiftly does archaeological criticism advance on the Euro- 
pean continent, that even Tischendorf 's Text now falls — although in 
this particular, verse, by leaving out "blood," the highest Catholic 
Hellenism (as it generally does) coincides with that employed in the 
"rational method" — behind the age of Lachmann's ; whose Text 
heads the list, justly eulogized by Tregelles 653 in these words: — "The 
first Greek Testament, since the invention of printing, edited wholly on 
ancient authority, irrespective of modern traditions, is due to Chakles 
Lachmann." 

It becomes, in consequence, evident to the reader that scientific 
arguments (in England at last, as they have ever been on the conti- 
nent), in which texts of the Greek Scriptures are involved, are neither 
carried on, at the present day, upon the obsolete English Version of 

650 Types of Mankind, Chap. XV, "Biblical Ethnography: — Section E. — Terms, Universal 
and Specific" — pp. 558-9. 

651 The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, &c. — from the French of Count A. de Gobi- 
neau — by H. Hotz ; Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 12mo, 1856 ; appendix C, p. 512. 

652 Op. cit., p. 113: See also the same author's admirable "Lecture on the Historic evi- 
dence of the authorship and transmission of the Books of the New Testament," London, 
12mo, 1852, passim. 



592 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

king James, nor upon the antiquated "textus receptus" of the old 
printed Greek exemplar; — but are henceforward to be made exclu- 
sively upon a Textus revisus that pending researches are combining 
to establish — some of the slighter difficulties in regard to which are 
manifested above in the various readings of one line of the Greek 
"Good Tidings." And, in order to substantiate what I have just 
said, that Romanist learning frequently agrees with the most rigidly 
exegetical, a quotation from the commentary of Bishop Kenrick 553 
will, in these United States, not fail to be respected : — 

Text, Acts XVII, 26 — "And He hath made of one all mankind." 

Note, on MSS. and traditions, " 5. G. P. ' of one blood.' The Vulgate 

reading is conformable to the Alexan- 
drian and three other Manuscripts, as 
also to that used by Clement of Alex- 
andria. The Coptic version agrees 
with it." 

Those who desire to pursue speculative guesses as to how, why, 
when, and by whom, the word alamos {blood) crept into the Text, will 
readily find, amid the works cited (supra, note 546), some very learned 
and ingenious explanations, and more commentaries inexpressibly 
silly. ISTone, however, can be discovered that satisfy, at one and the 
same time, the exigenda of archagological, palseographical, and eth- 
nological criticism. 

As to the first requirement: It was shown from Hennel 554 that 
the passage in question was not autographed by St. Paul himself, 
but proceeds from his secretary — the writer of Acts — probably author 
of the Hid Gospel, supposed to be "St. Luke." The learned and 
Reverend Lord Arthur Hervey judiciously remarks: — " There is 
also a peculiar difficulty in dealing with the Scriptures in such mat- 
ters, from our ignorance of the precise limits of inspiration, and of 
the degree of control exercised by the Holy Spirit over the writers, 
compilers, and editors of the sacred books, in such matters as history, 
science, and the like. * * * It certainly does not seem to have been 
the purpose of inspiration to teach miraculously any arts or sciences, 
and therefore it should not be deemed more derogatory to the inspi- 
ration of St. Paul or St. Luke, that they were not beyond the most 
learned of their contemporaries in the science of chronology, than it 
would be were we to discover that St. Paul came short of modern 
skill in the art of tent-making, or that St. Luke had not all the phy- 
siological knowledge attained by the most eminent physicians of our 

653 Acts of the Apostles, New York, 8vo, 1851, p. 111. 
65* Types of Mankind, p. 559. 



THE POLTGENISTS. 593 

time." 555 "When, therefore, as in four out of the five new-school com- 
mentators just cited, we behold really learned and strictly orthodox 
Churchmen, our contemporaries, making such honest admissions, a 
"Protestant dissenter" like myself, — whose education has been derived 
from totally different pursuits, in lands altogether foreign to their 
insular associations — may legitimately re-examine Pauline subjects 
from the archaeological stand-point alone. Hence, the only really 
historical fact deducible from all the above quotations is, that the 
Greek word "blood," not being in the MS. used by Clemens Alex- 
andrinus (a. d. 192-217), but occurring in that studied by Iren^us 
(a. d. 140-202), the intercalation was already made within say 1 50 
years after the unknown year of the demise of St. Luke. 

Now, any one who has inspected ancient Greek manuscripts and 
epigraphy (I myself have only seen a few decades), knows very well 
that, in the most archaic, the words run on, without divisions, in the 
same line " continua serie." Of the ancient Apostolic books extant 
we possess none written earlier that the 5th-6th centuries of our 
era, 556 — that is, about 200 years later than Clemens and Irenseus, or 
some 350 posterior to St. Luke ; and in the two most antique codices, 
LXX Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, the word ai'fiaro; does not recur. 
No one either will pretend that St. Luke took down St. Paul's speech 
at the time; or that the Evangelist used stenographic processes, — any 
more than claim that the "reporter" at Athens adopted Morse's 
magnetic telegraph. Hence, neither the credibility of St. Paul, nor 
that of St. Luke, is involved in our debate. 

The simplest and most rational method of explaining why this word 
"blood" crept into the later Greek Texts, — into the Latin it never did 
— is seen upon reflecting how, some early Christian anchorite, devoutly 
poi'ing over his MS. of Acts, had his attention arrested, whilst reading 
"and hath made of one," by a natural and impulsive query — "owe/ 
one what?" As a memento, he noted "aifAai-os" on the margin of his 
exemplar ; but unaccompanied by a note of interrogation " ? " — because 
such interjectional signs were not then invented. Within a generation 
or two afterwards, but before Irengeus, some amanuensis, transcribing 
our anchorite's much-worn codex into less archaic calligraphy and 
orthography, meeting with ai>a<ros on the margin, fancied that the 
word had been accidentally omitted, out of the Text, by the antecedent 
scribe. So the latter, with no fraudulent intent, auy more than our 
aforesaid anchorite, inserted the Greek for "blood" in his own tran- 
script; to the gladdening of the hearts of some pious readers of English, 

655 The Genealogies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, ascertained in the Gosjiels of St. 
Matthew and St. Luke, &c, London, 8vo, 1853; pp. 249, 256. 

656 Types of Mankind, pp. 612, 714. 

38 



594 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

and the bewilderment of the minds of others, 1600 years later, as 
well in Old England as in New. 

Thirdly. However learned, however venerable, may be the scholars 
whose words I have cited with no disrespect, none of them will lay 
claim to proficiency in Ethnology, nor have any of them spent half a 
lifetime in the Levant. If they had, they would have known that 
there, at this very hour, the same old repugnance (which their classi- 
cal scholarship makes them perfectly well cognizant of, in ancient 
Alexandria particularly) is still rife now with evils to human welfare 
that have always rendered Jews and the Greeks antagonistic to each 
other. I remember (and have I not shuddered over its blackened 
ruins ?) how, at Tripolitza, on the first flash of Greek independence, 
when, capitulating on the faith of the "honors of war," the Turkish 
garrison and Ottoman community were massacred, that, whilst the 
Mainiot palikaries spared a few of the Muslim girls and boys, they 
did not leave a man, woman, or child, of the Israelites alive. Eye- 
witnesses afterwards confirmed to me such atrocity during 10 months 
(1829) that, "for my sins," I waited at Napoli di Romania in the 
vain hope of obtaining, from Capodistrias, a tribunal whence to 
obtain back, in part, the value (only $800,000) of 36 cargoes in which 
my father was concerned, robbed by Greek pirates between 1824 and 
1828. I remember too, that it was this soul-harrowing outrage — 
first of hundreds perpetrated by Moreot Christian serfs — that caused 
Mussulman reverberation at the butcheries of Smyrna, Scio, and 
Ha'ivali; and, although Mohammed Ali's iron firmness joined to a 
numerous and tolerably armed European population alone spared us 
(1822) from witnessing similar abominations in Egypt, I recollect 
that, wherever, at Smyrna especially, some hapless Greek fugitive 
dodged the tophaik or yatagan, his hiding-place was invariably 
betrayed if known to any Jew; who, after Tripolitza and Missolonghi, 
naturally felt — 

" And if ye wrong lis, shall we not revenge?" 

So true is this, that the Hebrew serrdfs (money-changers — not 
seraphs) evacuated Greece exactly in the ratio that the Ottoman 
lords of the manor were forced to strike their tents and flee. No 
Hebrew lives willingly where Greeks rule ; any more than (and 
partly for the same reason) he likes residence in Scotland or in Con- 
necticut: and, even in their commercial relations everywhere, 
Grecian and Israelitish instincts are invariably in antagonism. 
Now, classical history on the one hand, the New Testament and the 
Talmudic books on the other, demonstrate precisely the same hostile 
and repulsive feelings, between the Shemites of Hierosolyma and 



THE POLTGENISTS. 595 

the "Andres Athenaioi," much farther back than the day when St. 
Paul and St. Luke were jibed by Indo-European mobility at tbe 
Areopagus. I need not dwell on the context of Acts XVII, to 
establish the non-success of two Jews — one a " Hebrew of Hebrews" 
— who in cacophonious Hellenistic-idiom 557 addressed the orthoepic 
and satirical men of Athens ; but, I maintain, and if necessary 
hereafter will historically prove, that the speaker (whether St. Paul 
himself, or St. Luke, or the "reporter") in making use, — amidst the 
knot of hard-hearted, if not soft-headed, Athenian "gamins" col- 
lected on Mars' Hill — of the phrase "hath made of one" all mankind, 
intended thereby to deprecate that (by the Jewish speaker strongly 
felt) Hellenic instinctive xenolasia toward Hebrews, which led the 
former (boasters that themselves were Autochthones) to repudiate the 
notion that a particle of Jewish "blood" flowed in their own veins. 
If this fact be disagreeable, I cannot help it. In anthropology the 
maxim must be — 

" Tros Tyrusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur." 

The question, of the existence of AIMAT02 in the original manu- 
script of St. Luke, " me parait," as Mariette says of that of the 
Apis-cycle [supra, p. 404), " defmitivement enterree." With it, 
also, its imagined corollary, that St. Paul ever meant that all the 
races of mankind, within the Poman limit of geography in his 
time, were "made of one blood." Polygenists, therefore, — so far as 
Acts xvii, 26, be concerned — are henceforward exempt from suspi- 

Kl 'EAXrjHoTiif, liaXacTos [inj, ffellenismus, Lingua Hellcnistica, &c. — Consult Samuel David 
Luzzato (Professor in the Rabbinical College of Padua), Prolegomena ad una Grammatica 
Ragionata della Lingua Ebraica ; Padova, 8vo, 1836, pp. 11, 67, 78-95: — Giambernakdo 
de Rossi [Della Lingua propria di Christo e degli Ebrei nazionali della Palestina da' tempi 
de' Maccabei dissertazione, Parma, 8vo, 1772, pp. 7, 16, 37-9, 85-129, 145-8). From the 
latter I present merely a few abstracts. The Palestinic Jews always repudiated Greek 
translations. So particular were their lineal descendants in Spain, that Rabbi Immanuel 
Aboab Bays (in his rare Nomology, or Legal Discourse), "una sola letra, que tenga de mas 
o de menos (aun que no varie el sentido) queda siendo profano, y no nos es lecito leer en 
el. * * * En la biblias griegas intitoladas de los Sentenia Inlerpretes, hallo una variedad y 
differencia tan grande en les estampas que no ay passo conforme." The Talmud (tract 
Sabbat) gives the injunction of Rabban Gamaliel, how translations should be thrown into 
"luoghi cenosi e sporchi, aceiocche eglino imputridiscano da loro medesimi." In another 
of his prodigious labors on the Text (Compendio di Gritica Sacra, Parma, 8vo, 1811, p. 8.8), 
De Rossi victoriously exonerates the Council of Trent from accusations of tolerating no 
Bible but the Vulgate. Here is his Italian version of the text of their decree, — the Latin 
of which is in his other work (Prcecipuis Caussis, Turin, 4to, 1769, pp. 79-80). 

" Considerando che non piccol vantaggio ne verrebbe la Chiesa, qualora si conosee, di 
tutte le latine edizioni che girano de' sacri libri, quale s'abbia a tenere per autentica, [the 
Council] stabilisce e dichiara, che questa stessa edizione antica e volgata, la quale da un 
lungo uso di tanti secoli e stata nella Chiesa medesima approvata, sia tenuta per autentica." 



596 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

cion of heresy. But, before quitting so dry a subject, I must gratify 
the reader with a pair of extracts from two different works, — parallel 
in critical calibre, and similar through an accident, that each of their 
authors boasts of an Allemanic surname — which will exemplify into 
what helpless vagaries this apochryphal noun "blood" has lifted up 
two most talented monogenists above the multitude. 

Sample A is chosen from the pages of Sir Robert H. Schom- 
burgk, 558 writing for the English public. 

A. — " Many scoffers have attempted to establish the hypothesis, 
that the first germs of the development of the human race in America, 
can be sought for nowhere but in that quarter of the globe ; but 
unless it can be proved that the laws of nature are in direct viola- 
tion with Mosaic \_sic! ! !~\ records, which expressly say that ' God has 
made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell on all the face 
of the earth,' we must still appeal to that Holy Book for interpreta- 
tion [that is, ' we must' hunt through the Pentateuch for Acts XVII, 
26 !]." 

Sample B is taken from some pages in the Charleston Medical 
Journal, 6 ® composed by an author 560 writing for the American public. 
With the exception of the figures appended, our compositors have 
been so good as to set it up in fac-simile. 

B. — "We are advocating the doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race simply on scien- 1 

tine principles. We care not to make issues on points that have no legitimate bearing 2 

on the subject to -which we are restricted in this discussion. Those with whom we intend 3 

to have no controversy have nothing to apprehend from our criticisms. We may, how- 4 

ever, here observe that the figures of dogs and of men (the latter only are of any scien- 5 

tine value,) on the eastern monuments, have been carefully studied and delineated by 6 

master-minds — men, at whose feet Mr. Gliddon has set as an humble copyist. They 7 

have commenced giving to the world the result of their scientific researches. Both 8 

Lepsius and Bunsen have already proclaimed their belief in the doctrine of the Unity of 9 

the Human Race, and the former, as we are informed, is now engaged in a work, in 10 

which he will offer reasons for the faith that is in him. Thus these monumental records, 11 

which caused Gliddon to pronounce in the language of scorn and obloquy a tirade 12 

against the scriptures, convinced the minds of Lepsius and Bunsen of their truth, and 13 

filled them with humility, reverence, and awe. Their scientific researches satisfied 14 

them of the doctrines proclaimed by Moses, and confirmed by Paul. 15 

" 'And (God) hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of 16 

the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their 17 

habitation.' Acts 17 ch. 26 v. 18 

558 Twelve Views in British Guiana, &c, London, folio, 1841, p. 29. 

559 Charleston, S. C, 1854 — republished as a Monograph, "An Examination of the 
characteristics of Genera and Species as applicable to the Doctrine of the Unity of the 
Human Race," pp. 22-3. Its author rides, or is bestridden by, two hobbies, — the one 
theological, and the other mammalogical. His duplex equitation maw airOu — (See Stkauss, 
Vie de Jesus, transl. Littrf, Paris, 1839, II, l e partie, pp. 302-13) — always puts me in mind 
cf an "old, and musty" Greek proverb, how — "Leucon carried one thing, and his ass 
another." 

660 Types of Manlcind, p. 628, foot-note 210; and "Memoir of Morton," pp. liii-vi. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 597 

"These distinguished naturalists both arrived at the conclusion, from these very 19 
monuments, that the negro races had only been developed in the course of ages within 20 
the African tropics and were derived from Egypt. The minds of men are differently 21 
constituted, and we here perceive what opposite impressions are made on different 22 
minds in visiting the same localities, and in investigating the same subjects." 23 

Now, in reprinting this specimen of the style adopted hy a 
"Dutch-Reformed" theologer in this country, my only regrets lie in 
the unavoidable mention of two world-renowned, and by myself 
much-honored, names — Chevaliers Bunsejj and Lepsius: at the feet 
of whom (like St. Paul " at the feet of Gamaliel "j 561 1 have always 
felt proud to sit for instruction, — received, as not a slight portion of 
what little I know has been, oftentimes with mine own feet under 
their respective mahoganies. 

What concerns the reader, however, is the logical deduction, — on 
comparing lines 14-15 with line 19 of the above extract — that 
"Moses" and "Paul" were "distinguished naturalists both" ! 

Nobody, who reads, writes, and ciphers, can be such an ignoramus 
as not to know, that Chevaliers Bunsen and Lepsius — occupied in 
other equally-elevated branches of human science, such as archaeology, 
history, philosophy, and linguistics — would disdain (whatever, as 
educated gentlemen, they may read about Natural History) to accept 
an attribution to themselves severally of any scientific speciality not 
within the circumference of their respective studies. The pages of 
this volume will be the first intimation either of these Savans receives 
that both of them are suspected to be "naturalists,"' — and that, too, 
by a fractious sciolist who actually wrote a book to demonstrate the 
Unity of Mankind without having read the first syllable of Pri- 
chaed. 562 "Potete frenarvi dalle risa? miei valenti amici !" 

Where did either Chev. Lepsius or Chev. Bunsen ever say, that 
"negro races * * * were derived from Egypt" [?] (supra, lines 20—1). 

The last three lines, 21-3, prove how the same writer — utterly des- 
titute of any Egyptological works — fancies that the great Prussian 
Ambassador to Rome and England has visited Egypt. Everybody else 
knows that Chevalier Bnnsen's travels never extended beyond Europe. 

Finally, the only expression, known to the world, of Chev. Lep- 
sius's impressions, in regard to human monogenism or polygenism, 
is derived from a casual remark made by him in a friendly letter to 
my respected colleague Dr. J. C. Nott: and by the latter inserted in 
our first joint publication, for the very object of not involving the 
honored Egj^ptologist of Berlin in any blame that might accrue to 

661 Were it obligatory upon me to digress upon Pauline themes in general, their analysis 
would cost no more trouble than reference to an octavo (London, 1818), attributed to the 
capacious brain of a great jurist— Jeremy Bentham — entitled, "not Paul, but Jesus;" and 
published under the pseudonym of Gamaliel Smith, Esq. 

mi Types of Mankind, p. liv. 



598 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

the Doctor and myself for open statement of our common ethnologi- 
cal opinions: and it is, truly, in perfect harmony with the literary pro- 
bity manifested — by every theologer who may have experienced some 
cutis anserina whilst perusing "Types of Mankind" — which has not 
merely prevented any one of them from honestly mentioning where he 
learned that Chev. Lepsius 563 "proclaimed" his now very unbiassed 
sentiments on "the doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race," — 
but which has been unable to impede Dr. Nbtt and myself from 
responding to the wide and loud calls [see Alphabetical List of Sub- 
scribers, infra] for another and a stronger book, through the same 
Publishers, announced as the Earth's "Indigenous Races." 

The subjoined remarks, by our ever-valued colleague Mr. Luke 
Burke, 564 have already put a direct question to any man who volun- 
tarily adventures into the ethnological arena after this year of our 
XlXth century: whilst "old, and musty" Terence 565 supplies me 
with all I need repeat in the premises • — 

"Si mihi pergit quae Tult dicere, ea quse non vult audiet." 



There still remains, in order to group together all the preceding 
arguments into a "corps de doctrine," the very subject which sug- 
gested my epigraph to this chapter, viz., "the monogenists and the 
polygenists." What deduction will either school draw from the 
present accumulation of facts ? Time only can show. For my own 
part, I have met with no reason to emend, or change, the position 
taken in the last course of lectures delivered in New Orleans, 566 as 
regards my individual opinions on the unity or diversity of human 
origin. It was the following : 



to 



663 Types of Mankind, p. 233. Whilst these pages are being stereotyped, I have again a 
fresh and welcome proof of the Chevalier's kind reminiscence, through the reception of his 
most recent work — Uber die Goiter der Vier Elemenle bei den Agijptern, Berlin, 4to., 1856. 

564 " Does he speak as a theologian, or does be speak as a man of science ? If as a theo- 
logian, he may argue in peace to the end of the chapter, we shall not care to disturb him; 
but if he claims to reason as a scientific man, then we expect that he shall submit to the 
laws of science ; then we consider ourselves privileged to judge him by the rules of common 
sense. Then he must be reminded that those who live in glass houses ought not to throw 
stones, and that those who use theology to pinion scientific men within hopeless dilemmas, 
may find in the end that it is less difficult than they supposed to turn the tables upon them- 
selves ; for assuredly, if scientific men were only to rouse themselves to the same zeal and 
love of conquest which animate theologians, there would soon rain down upon theology 
such a pitiless storm, as would require stronger brains to weather than any we have at the 
present day to contend with." — Charleston Medical Journal and Review, Charleston, S. C, 
July, 1856, X, No. 4, Art. I, "Strictures," p. 444. 

665 Ter., Andr., V. iv., 17. 

we On " Ethnology— Egypt's testimony"— 9th lecture (of 15) delivered before the Lyceum 
of the Second Municipality, Feb. 20, 1852: — New Orleans "Daily Crescent," Feb. 21. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 599 

" Some years of association with Dr. Morton [since 1852 confirmed 
" by almost-constant investigation of the problem for myself] have 
" gradually led me to the conviction : — 

" 1st, that every argument hitherto brought forward on the unity- 
" side is either refuted or refutable ; but that, 

" 2d, whilst the reasonings in favor of the diversity-view preponde- 
" rate greatly over those against it, I do not, nevertheless, hold the 
" latter to be, as yet, absolutely proven. 

" Lest such assertion should appear paradoxical, I would explain, 
" — that the proofs of diversity are chiefly of a negative character; 
"and, on the other hand, these questions being still 'sub judice,' 
" some discovery in science, now unforeseen, may hereafter establish 
" unity upon a certain basis." 

It is not, however [as the reader of our last work can well under- 
stand], from any submissiveness towards dictates emanating from 
the theocratical point of view, that I consider the dogmatic argument 
to stand, down to the present moment and in all the works known 
to me, among those propositions hitherto unrefuted. Want of space 
alone 567 prevented further publication, of MSS. which covered bibli- 
cal ethnology, on that occasion ; and the arrangement of the several 
chapters of this volume has equally precluded (save in respect to 
Acts) continuance of scriptural branches of inquiry on the present. 
in the interim, during more recent studies in Europe, I have been 
enabled to collect former desiderata that, some day, may find utter- 
ance in matured shape ; when asseverations in support of monoge- 
nism, grounded upon the Textus receptus whether of Old or New 
Testaments, shall be critically examined. 

Persevering consistently to the end in that method of quotation 
previously announced [supra, p. 403], it is with three extracts from 
works of our living contemporaries that I submit, to others, the 
thoughts and ideas in which I participate, couched in language far 
superior to that through which I might have endeavored to express 
them. They are emanations of the French mind in our pending 
age; each differing from the two others as concerns the subject 
whence it takes its point of departure, but all uniting in grandeur 
of sentiment, eloquence of diction, and truthfulness of utterance. 

" Strange destiny that of theology ! That of being condemned 
never to attach herself except to systems which are already crumbling 
down : that of being, through her essence, the enemy of every new 
science and to all progress. Yes, — she foresaw that a day would come 
to dethrone her, — this theology, this sacerdotal science- — when, during 

<*' Types of Mankind, pp. G26-7. 



600 THE MONOGENISTS AND 

paganism, she sought to frighten humanity by the myth of Prome- 
theus. She struggled to depict, with the colors of impiety, the man who 
was going to demand of Nature its secrets and its laws; and she 
manacled him beforehand to a rock: but time, far from riveting the 
chain, has been unceasingly detaching it. The spread of man's 
discoveries, the importance of his victories, compel evermore the 
public conscience to admire, as a noble independence, as a courage- 
ous effort, that which theology wished not to regard but as a haughty 
attempt that the All-Powerful had punished by ill-fortunes and 
chastisements. We willingly approach, now-a-days, the tree of 
knowledge ; and we no more believe that it is Satan who presents us 
with its poisoned fruits." 568 

" 16. It is said that the telescope of Herschell [that of Lord Posse 
has since performed mightier wonders], which has unveiled to us 
nebula? before unknown, magnified twelve thousand times. If a 
glass were made of sufficient power to magnify a million times, the 
milky-ways would be multiplied prodigiously ; and would seem to 
us so crowded together, that they would form but one spherical vault 
of suns shining in those unknown regions. And yet all these suns 
are separated from each other by profound deserts of darkness ! 
Here, before this wide circle of bright bodies, the power of human 
view must stop : here must be the barrier which shuts from our vision 
the rest of the creation. But this is not the limit of the universe. 

" 17. Here thought and language fail to express the grandeur of 
the reality. "We can scarcely imagine it by the assistance of time 
and space. To overload the mind with accumulations of time and 
space, is still to prescribe limits to that which has none, — in adding 
duration to duration and extent to extent. Let us suppose as many 
suns and worlds as we have enumerated : in our transports of enthu- 
siasm, let us bound beyond myriads of spaces a thousand and a 
thousand times more vast : let us unite all those heavens, and exag- 
gerate the number of them as far as the imagination can reach, — 
still, beyond this immeasurable portion of the creation in which 
the dazzled thought is lost, the universe continues without bounds 
and without measure. 

" 18. Overwhelmed by the majesty of the universe, human intel- 
ligence sinks into a state of insensibility before its unfathomable 

568 Alfred Maury, Essai sur les Legendes Pieuses du Moyen-Age; ou Examen de ce qu'elles 
renferment de meTveilleux, d'apres les connaissances- que fournissent de nos jours Varcheologie, 
la theologie, la philosophic et la phgsiologie medicate: Paris, 8vo, 1843, "Introduction," pp. 
xix-xx. 



THE POLYGENISTS. 601 

depths. Those vast and inscrutable abysses, which man sees but 
imperfectly, are only a point in that infinity of space where the 
most solid thoughts, the most profound meditations, and the science 
of all ages, are lost. 

" 19. In presence of this grand spectacle, man finds within him- 
self an instructive sentiment, which manifests to him an Almighty 
and Creative Power, as surely as his eyes show him the light. Then 
creation is explained, its object is understood. To feel the existence 
of infinity is to have a revelation of eternity, — to contemplate 
Nature is to take pleasure in what is best, — to study it is to seek 
the truth, — it is to take the path which leads to GOD, — to recog- 
nize the workman in his work. And why should it not be so, when 
His glory is written in the heavens ? Each sun is a letter of His 
name, and His name is infinite ! What more striking evidence of 
the Divine thought than that of the work which received and 
reflected it? The universe is then to the human race what it has 
been, is, and always will be : the daily and eternal instructions of 
a Master who wishes to show Himself in the harmonies which He 
has placed in it: a magnificent expression of the inaccessible in- 
telligence which embraces, possesses, and holds dominion over all : 
a sublime act of the Divine understanding, which, in the eloquent 
simplicity of its art, made use only of a single substance to produce, 
at a single cast, the grain of sand which the wave rolls on our 
shores, and the spacious continents which rise from our globe : an 
infinite substance, the first and only one of all things, and, at the 
same time, the universal and immediate means appointed for the 
government of space, matter, movement, and life : the element and 
vehicle of the phenomena perceived by our organs, susceptible of 
exercising the most delicate functions — those even which are imper- 
ceptible to our senses, imponderable to our instruments, and yet 
able to break in pieces worlds, with a violence incalculable, in the 
unbounded employment of its strength : which is itself its own 
generating and preserving principle : which never creates nor anni- 
hilates, but organizes and develops life, regulates the superabundance 
of it by death, and thus continues the untroubled course of Nature: 
which is continually bringing to perfection, and remains itself 
without change : which produces the most varied contrasts, and acts 
without any variation : which has scattered in the wide plains of 
infinity thousands of millions of centres of movement appropriated 
to each of them, and reduces them to one : which draws from unity 
its inexhaustible resources, and contains them in unity : in fine, 
whose effects are so many innumerable combinations, and whose 
cause is unique and profoundly simple. For one single matter, 



602 THE MONOGENISTS, ETC. 

spread throughout the universe, is its origin, its preservation, and 
its law." 569 

" There seems to he accordance upon one point. It is, that, 
alongside of theology, a new science is rising up, viz., 'the science of 
religions' * * * The world is positive, because it grows old : hut it 
had been credulous, insane ; intoxicated with poetry and supersti- 
tion ; in love with that Nature which we now-a-days cause to pass 
through the crucible." 570 

G. E. GL 
Philadelphia, February, 1857. 

669 Trastouk, Caloric. — Origin, Matter, and Law of the Universe, New Orleans, 8vo, 1847, 
pp. 7-8. "Eleve de l'Eeole polytecnique" himself, and a mining-Engineer of high position 
in Mexican and Central American localities, my friend M. Trastour understands, as well as 
the reader, that, absolutely unacquainted with Physics, I have no opinion whatever upon 
an imponderable termed "Caloric." 

670 V'inet, Les Paradis Profanes de V Occident, Paris, 8vo, 1856, p. 1. 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 603 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECTION" I. 

COMMENTARY UPON THE PRINCIPAL DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE 
AMONG THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 

( With an Ethnographic Tableau.) 
BY GEO. R. GLIDDON. 

Under the above heading, I had elaborated a more diffuse argu- 
ment, than in the remaining few pages of this volume can now be 
submitted to the reader. But, in the first place, the preceding chap- 
ters, by Messrs. Maury, Pulszky, Meigs, and Nbtt, — independently 
of a good deal of matter latterly transferred, for the sake of giving it 
a more appropriate place, back into my own Chapter (V.) — have 
already covered a vast range of ethnological inquiry ; and, in the 
second, our Publishers especially enjoin upon me not to let this book 
exceed in bulk much "above 600 pages," in order that its artistic 
appearance, in view of the extra-thickness caused by our lithographic 
plates, should not vary greatly from that of Types of Mankind. 

It being taken for granted, therefore, that the reader of the pre- 
sent work — should he be interested in ethnology — is acquainted 
with the contents of our former one, I feel persuaded that, with the 
facts and the bibliographical references comprised in the two, if to 
both he may be plea.sed to add Morris's tasteful edition (1855) of 
Prichaed's Natural History of Man, together with the latter's Six 
Ethnographical Maps, such reader is fully competent to make his own 
"Commentary" on the distinctive characteristics of the various fifty- 
four races of mankind presented to his eye in the annexed Ethno- 
graphic Tableau. 

Hence my part may properly limit itself to the continuation of a 
few more extracts, that generalize, in some degree, thoughts sug- 
gested by its inspection. 



60<± DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

"Were it possible," "wrote the vigorous expunger 571 of a dogmatical work which of erst 
tried to uphold, categorically, the "unity of the human species" — "Were it possible for an 
individual to gain access to a situation sufficiently commanding, and to be indued with 
optics sufficiently powerful, to take, at once, a clear and discriminating survey of the whole 
earth — could he thus obtain an accurate and distinct view of the appearance and sensible 
character of everything existing on its surface — diversities of colour, form, dimension, and 
motion, with all other external properties of matter — were such an event possible, one of 
the most curious and interesting objects that would attract our spectator's attention, would 
be, the variety discoverable in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the human 
race. In one section of the globe, he would behold a people lofty and well-proportioned, 
elegant, and graceful ; and in another, not far remote, a description of men diminutive, 
deformed, unsightly, and awkward. Here would rise to view a nation with flowing locks, 
a well-arched forehead, straight and finely-modelled limbs, and a complexion composed of 
the carnation and the lily ; there, a race with frizzled hair, clumsy and gibbous extremi- 
ties, a retreating forehead, and a skin of ebony. In one region he would be charmed with 
a general prominence and boldness of feature, an attractive symmetry, a liveliness of air, 
and a vigor of expression, in the human countenance ; while in another, he would be dis- 
gusted by its flatness, vacancy and dulness, offended with its irregularity, or shocked at its 
fierceness. Between these several extremes would appear a multiplicity of intermediate 
gradations, constituting collectively an unbroken chain, and, manifesting at once the sim- 
plicity yet diversity of the operations of the Deity, in peopling the earth with human inha- 
bitants." 

After refuting, point by point, every postulate advanced by bis 
scholastic but unscientific author, and exposing the sophisms through 
which each is supported, Dr. Caldwell remarks on the doctrine itself: 

" Its principles, if admitted to their full extent, would lead to results which our author 
would be himself the first to deprecate. They would prove unfriendly in their operation to 
morality and religion, and even subversive of the dignity of man and the order and har- 
mony of the physical world. They are calculated to favor a system of levelling and con- 
solidation which would reduce to the same species many animals that appertain, in reality, 
to different genera. By their seductive and pernicious influence we might be gradually led 
to a belief in the original identity of even the white man himself, the golok [hylobates Hoo- 
look ?] or wild man of the woods, and the large Orang-outang ; so apparently inconsiderable 
are the shades of difference between them, when their systems are analyzed, and their 
individual features and limbs attentively compared with each other. When examined, 
however, and compared in their general result, their dissimilarities are so numerous and 
striking, as to constitute insuperable objections to such a monstrous hypothesis. We become 
at once convinced by the evidence before us, that differences so wide and radical, could 
never have been produced by the agency of any common causes now in operation on our 
globe ; but that the beings marked by them belong to races originally and immutably dis- 
tinct. Such precisely is the case in relation to the different races of men." 

' ' It now remains to be said," continues the profound physiologist Desmoulins, 572 " whether, 
in each of these races, of these species,' men were children of the earth whereupon history 
perceives them from times the most obscure ; or, if, coming in similar likeness from one 

571 Criticism — For the Portfolio (Philadelphia, 3d series, vol. iv., 1814; articles 1 and 4, 
pp. 8-9, 863-4) — of " An Essay on the causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure, in 
the Human Species, &c, &c. By Samuel Stanhope Smith, D. D. LL. D., &c, &c." I owe 
acquaintance with this most powerful argument to the favor of Mr. George Ord, President of the 
Acad, of Nat. Sciences ; who informs me that it was written in early life by one since eminent 
in medical and ethnological questions — the late Dr. Charles Caldwell. These papers are 
an enlargement of a previous critique published in the North American Review, July, 1811. 

« 2 Races Eumaines, 1826; pp. 155, 158. 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 605 

and the same native country, they became diversified according to the novelty of each 
climate ; of which the influence, singly, or united with that of a supposed sidereal revolu- 
tion, would thus have transformed children of one and the same father, — creating there some 
negroes, here some Kourilians, yonder some Finns, hither some Mongols, &c. * * * Races 
and species, everywhere that they remain pure and without mixture, preserve invariable all 
the traits, all the physical characters which the first observers saw in them, and that they 
indubitably possessed from the very beginning. Their alteration is everywhere the product 
of intermixture, the fusion between heterogeneous populations. Climate and all the influ- 
ences engendered by it have alone no hold, whether upon the form of the body and face, or 
on the color of the skin, or upon that of the hair and its nature. These causes possess only 
a slight power, as will be seen in the following book, on the color of the skin in certain 
races. In all these mixtures there does not either result indifferently a mean of expression 
of traits of each race. Ordinarily, one dominates the other." 

Denying, therefore, with Dr. Caldwell, that climatic changes of 
latitude or longitude have had any permanent influence upon the 
race-character of the human skin ; and recognizing, with Desmoulins 
and Morton, no known causes subsequent in action to the Creator's 
coloring of each race, hut direct amalgamation,— otherwise intermix- 
ture between different types — as explanatory of the endless gradations 
of color now beheld in humanity throughout the world ; it follows 
that, according to my conception of the primitive state of mankind 
in each zoological province of creation, the shades in coloration of 
the skin, eyes and hair, must have been less numerous than appear 
at the present day after so many thousand years of interminglings 
and migrations. "What may have been the exact primordial, or ab- 
original, cuticular color of each type ; into how many or how few 
distinct national tints they might be resolved, there seems to be (out- 
side of the comparatively small area covered by the earth's historical 
nations), no means now of ascertaining ; although some plausible con- 
clusions are attainable through induction. In any case, the historical 
permanence of many colors being determined through monumental 
and written evidence for 3000 to 4000 years, we may fairly challenge 
objectors to produce evidence that other unrecorded shades did not 
exist contemporaneously. Egyptian monuments, Hebrew ethnology, 
Assyrian sculptures, Greek and Roman iconography, Chinese annals, 
Mexican and Peruvian antiquities, with many ancient descriptions 
of personages or nations, 573 combine to establish, in each geographical 
centre, that the peoples within and around it presented the same 
coloration as their descendants at this day, — all later variations being 
satisfactorily accounted for through phenomena produced by physical 
amalgamation between subsequent intruders and the primitive stocks. 
Thus, for instance, there are now two very distinct colors seen among 
the Israelites ; one exceedingly dark, sallow, with black eyes and 
hair ; the other, fair even to pallor, with light blue or hazel eyes, and 

5,3 All these positions are now proved, I take it, in the present volume. 



60G DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

yellow or reddish hair ; notwithstanding that, of all races, the Jews, 
especially in modern times, have striven beyond any types to pre- 
serve their blood pure from all admixture. And one may reduce the 
counter-argument of some monogenists who, with Prichard, have 
thrown overboard Usher's b. c. 4004 for " Creation," viz., that, who can 
tell what the action of unnumbered chiliads of j>re-historic ages may 
have done iu changing one type itfto another? — to a simple rule of 
three: If 5000 years, as proved by every possible testimony, have 
done nothing, how much will any time do ? 

"Nothing," wrote Quoy and Gaimard, 5 ' 4 the accurate observers who sailed round the 
world with Dumont d'Urville (1826-9), " better proves the difficulty that zoology presents, 
when one's object is to well characterize a species, or a variety of species, than the diversity 
of human races, admitted by naturalists. How, indeed, can distinctions, oftentimes so 
fugacious, become settled upon solid bases ! When, in correct zoology, one would determine 
a species, it is by uniting the greatest possible number of individuals that some certainty 
may be attained. How, then, catch all those delicate hues constituting that which is called 
fades, through notes, drawings, and recollections weakened by the distances one has tra- 
versed, and by the absence of the individuals one has to compare ? In order to obtain posi- 
tive results, it would be, therefore, necessary to do that which is, so to say, impossible ; viz. : 
unite a great number of individuals of these varieties, for the purpose of comparing them 
together ; and to cause oil-portraits to be made as perfect likenesses, in order to indicate the 
precise shade of the physiognomy. This has not as yet been done in a satisfactory manner, 
and any attempt to do it would encounter considerable difficulties during the rapidity of a 
nautical voyage." 

Many of the obstacles, deplored thirty years ago by such qualified 
judges, to collecting an adequate series of ethnological likenesses, 
continue in force at the present day ; but the photographic meliora- 
tions which Daguerre's wonderful discovery has latterly received, 
combined with the dexterous application of colored plaster-casts to 
the human bust, have already removed the more serious impediments 
to future mechanical exactitude. To Dumoutier 575 unquestionably 
belongs the merit of first practising, on a large scale, this method of 
permanently securing faithful copies of Oceanic and Australian types. 
Blanchard's comments on this superb collection are worthy of careful 
perusal. 

" The physiognomies, of the inhabitants of localities visited by explorers, have been often 
represented, through the aid of drawing, in accounts of voyages; but, in all, one may affirm 
it, these representations are imperfect. H there be, now and then, any which approximate 
to the truth, it is, so to say, always^ impossible to verify them. The anthropologist can, 

574 Voyage de la Corvette V Astrolabe ; Zoologie, Paris, 8vo, 1830; I, chap. 1, "Del'Homme;" 
p. 15. 

" s Voyage de V Astrolabe el de la Zelie ; Alias, Anthropologic, Paris, fol., 1845—50; Text in 
8vo, 1854, by Blanchabd. Cf. Bulletin de la Soc. Ethnol. de Paris, 1847, I, pp. 284-5, 
289-90. The original casts, exactly colored, but representing chiefly Melanian and Poly- 
nesian races, now adorn the Galerie Anthropologique at the Jardin des Plantes. My wife 
had only time to copy the tints given to each bust 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 607 

therefore, have no confidence in them. He must renounce their employment in determining 
the characteristics of races; in a word, he cannot utilize them. 

"Artists habituated to draw unceasingly the European type, 576 are unskilful, in the greater 
number of cases, in tracing the portrait and the true physiognomy of an American savage, 
or of a Polynesian Islander. They tend irresistibly to give him, more or less, the expression 
of those European faces which they are accustomed to reproduce through the art of design. 
Hence proceed all those likenesses of native races, from different parts of the world, that 
ordinarily resemble Europeans accoutred in a queer costume, and besmeared (barbouilles) 
with yellow, brown, black. M. Dumoutier has better understood what was necessary to be 
done in order to give an exact knowledge of the facial traits, and of the general form of 
the head, amongst those tribes he has observed. 

" In each locality, he was at great pains to persuade some individuals to allow themselves 
to be moulded [in plaster], and we must believe that he well knew how to come about it. 
He has succeeded in bringing back a great number of casts taken upon inhabitants of the 
majority of places touched at by the corvettes Astrolabe and Zelee. M. Dumoutier has thus 
gathered a collection of busts of the highest interest, the greater portion of which are now 
placed in the ' galerie anthropologique du Museum d'histoire naturelle de Paris.' " 

After showing, nevertheless, that material difficulties in the execu- 
tion of casts render even them somewhat faulty, by closing the eyes 
and distorting features, — and recommending that a daguerreotype 
should always accompany each head — Blanchard again remarks: 

" Hitherto, anthropological museums being very inconsiderable, one has been obliged to 
resign one's self to comparisons too restricted for their results to be seriously generalized. 
These comparisons, furthermore, reduce themselves to very small affairs. At the scientific 
point, it is not allowable to dwell upon such variable impressions of tourists ; and yet, thi6, 
even until now, is the principal stock of anthropology." 5 " 

576 Strolling one day (April, 1849), with my friend Dr. Boudin, through the Jardin des 
Tuilleries, he drew my attention to a marble statue, "all standing naked in the open air," 
of Apollo (I think) ; "dont," as he observed, "les cuisses ont du negre," — at the same time 
that the upper part of the body is magnificent. This incongruity, however, received expla- 
nation through an odd circumstance ; viz. : that the Parisian statuary commissioned to exe- 
cute the work, — wishing to save his own pocket, and not being able to procure, at the price, 
a white man sufficiently well made-up to stand for a "torso" in his studio — hired a fine- 
looking negro-valet, then at Paris, as the cheaper alternative. Upon the latter's splendid 
bust he set, indeed, Phoebus's sublime head, but ... he forgot the legs ! In the same manner, 
subsequently (Oct., 1855), at the picture-gallery of the Exposition TJniverselle, my well-be- 
loved cousin, Miss C. J. Gliddon, pointed out to me a couple of paintings, by an English 
artist, of scenes in Spain, — for richness of coloring and accuracy of costume unsurpassable ; 
but, spite of beards or coquettish veils, each male or female face betrayed an English 
country-bumpkin. Again, I have seen Chinese colored sketches, of English officers and ladies 
walking about Macao during the war of 1841-2, exquisitely done ; save that their eyes were 
all oblique, while their "Caucasian" features were lost in the Sinico-Mongol. But for 
possession of my old comrade M. Prisse's "Oriental Album" I should have been unable 
to indicate to the reader, — through any works known to me about the very peoples I 
know best — a faithful likeness of an Arab ; and even this falls short of the most beautiful 
of all, viz., the portrait of the glorious and ill-starred Abdallah-ebn-Soohood, Prince of the 
heroic Wah'abees (Mengin, I'Sgypte sous le Gouv. de Mohammed Aly, Paris, 1823, II, p. 142). 
The octavo text I happen to have ; but the folio Atlas lies still with my library — and other 
things — somewhere in Egypt. So much in confirmation of M. Pulszky's four propositions 
[supra, pp. 96-97]. 
577 Op. cit., pp. 7-8, 47. 



608 DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

If such are the lamentations of an ethnologist in the centre of 
science, at Paris, how unreasonable it would be to expect ampler 
collections of iconographic materials, illustrative of human types, 
elsewbere ? 

The iconoplastic inspiration of Dumoutier has been since applied, 
by M. de Froberville, 678 with increased accuracy as regards colora- 
tion, to African races at Bourbon and Mauritius. Of sixty beautiful 
casts, representing an astonishing variety of Mozambique negroes, I 
was favored by this learned ethnologist with a sight of several ; and 
I am free to state that they opened a new world of light to me as 
regards African populations on the eastern coast. Unfortunately 
these fac-similes are still inedited. On the other hand, plaster- 
moulding inevitably effaces the expression of the eye ; 679 but this 
defect can now be counterbalanced through photography ; nowhere 
employed with such thorough appreciation of anthropological exi- 
genda as by MM. Deveria, Rousseau, and Jacquart, at the Mu- 
seum d'Histoire Naturelle. Compared to this Gallery, — save only the 
department of craniology, in which it is surpassed by the Mortonian 
collection at Philadelphia 580 — all other collections known to my per- 
sonal observation, or through report, sink into insignificance. Ske- 
letons, skulls, anatomical preparations ; casts of entire figures, busts, 
and heads, colored and uncolored, of an immense number of nations ; 
oil and water-colored portraits, daguerreotypes, photographs, of indi- 
viduals from all parts of the world ; not forgetting those exquisite 
colored models of Russian races, presented by Prince Dernidoff, — all 
these, and other items by far too various for emimeration, already 
render the G-alerie Anthropologique (as might have been inferred 
where French science directs) one of the glories of Paris, no less 
than foremost in the world's ethnology. In fact, such an admirable 
system has there been laid down, susceptible of indefinite expansion, 
that with very trifling aid from the imperial government, Paris might 
contain, amidst her thousand attractions to the student, as well as to 

578 "Rapport sur les races negres de lAfrique orientale an sud de FiSquateur, observers 
par M. de Feoberville — Comptes rendus des seances de V Academic des Sciences, xxx, 3 Juin, 
1850 — "tirage a, part" 14 pages: — and Bulletin de la Soc. Ethnol. de Paris, 1846; i. pp. 
89-90 ; and elsewhere in the Bulletins de la Soc. de Geographic 

This gentleman told me that the method he had employed was, to gum square bits of paper 
on the skin of each individual whose cast he had previously taken, and then to cause his 
artist to color them until the hue disappeared in that of the " torso" himself. Transferring 
thence this colored paper to the plaster-cast, the same process yielded a perfect copy of such 
person's cuticular coloration. 

579 See an example in M. DAvezac's " Y^bou," exquisitely moulded though it was by the 
care of De Blainville, in our "Ethnographic Tableau," No. 27. 

580 There are, however, admirable materials, forming the nucleus of what might become a 
great anthropological museum, in the London Royal College of Surgeons. 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 609 

persons of education and leisure, every desideratum in anthropology. 
An appropriation of not more than 100,000 francs to the Galerie 
Anthropologique, coupled with official instructions to her consuls, 
chiefs of expeditions, governors, and naval commanders, scattered 
over the world, to collect — at national expense — colored photographs 
(front, back, and profile) of all types of man, male and female, within 
their several reach, — and executed upon an uniform scale, according 
to rules for measurements, &c, such as none but French administrative 
experiences know so well how to give — these two ordinances, "pure 
and simple," are, now, all that is required to make France, within 
five or ten years, as supreme in ethnology as she is in every other 
science. No other government in the world will perform this service 
towards the study of man ; because the two or three others (that may 
have the power) do not possess, amid the personnel of their Execu- 
tives, men of education sufficiently refined to appreciate " ethno- 
logy" — its true political value, or its eventual humanitarian influences. 
To such Cabinets, of cast-iron mould, appeal is useless, owing to their 
intellectual conditions; to others, like cultivated Sardinia for instance, 
its achievement would be almost impossible. If imperial centraliza- 
tion in France does not accomplish for Mankind that which has been 
done everywhere in behalf of beetles, snakes, bats, and tadpoles, gene- 
rations must yet pass away before, through any amount of private 
enterprise, those materials can be collected, in one spot, that might 
afford a comprehensive insight into this planet's human occupants. 

Such are the disheartening convictions which general experience, 
gathered eastward and westward during former years, followed by 
some five exclusively devoted to ethnological inquiries, have forced 
upon me involuntarily. Mortifying to my aspirations as the acknow- 
ledgment may be, a brief sketch of the precursory steps taken to 
accomplish our "Ethnographic Tableau," such as it is, will be the 
best comment upon its difficulties of realization. 

It was my conception, when setting out for Europe, with the 
object of gathering materials for the present volume, to prepare a 
Map of the world, colored somewhat upon the plan of Prof. Agas- 
siz's suggestion, 581 in size of about four folio sheets ; containing the 
most exact colored -portraits of races procurable, drawn to an uniform 
scale, and each placed geographically in situ. Copiously supplied, 
beyond any others in this country, as is our Academy of Natural 
Sciences with works upon every department of Natural History, 
and among them many containing excellent human iconographic 
specimens, they were wholly inadequate to the execution of my 



581 



Types of Mankind, p. lxxviii, and Map. 



610 DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

plan : but I supposed that European libraries migbt easily make up 
the deficiency. Procuring a large skeleton chart, and coloring it 
into zoological realms and fauna?, I made a preliminary list of about 
150 human families whose likenesses were desirable. Their names, 
written on differently-colored pieces of paper, an inch square, were 
then pasted upon this map, each one in its geographical locality, to 
stand as mnemonics for the portraits to be afterwards inserted. 
Through the politeness of the late M. Ducos, Minister for ISTaval 
Affairs, the choice library of the Ministere de la Marine, together 
with the vast repository of the Depot de la Marine, were freely 
opened to my visits ; and here, Bajot 583 in hand, my bibliographical 
explorations commenced. The Bibliothlques Imperiale, de I'Institut, 
and du Jardin des Plantes, were equally accessible through the kind- 
ness of friends, during eight months' stay at Paris ; and, for eight 
months subsequently, I resumed my old seat in that paradise of a 
bibliophilos, owing to the incomparable facilities readers obtain 
there, the British Museum Library. Altogether I worked in the 
midst of such resources for about twelve months of time, — always 
aided, when necessary, by my "Wife's enthusiastic help — guided 
throughout by considerate indices from distinguished savans ; during 
which period thousands of volumes were subjected to scrutiny, hun- 
dreds yielding materials either for my wife's pencil or my own note- 
books. In fact, no literary means were lacking for the attainment 
of my object; no efforts spared towards realizing it. Having, in 
consequence, acquired practical knowledge of the probable range of 
ethnographic materials accumulated at the present day, I can now 
speak of their deficiencies with more confidence. Alas ! they are 
great indeed ! 

It was not long, however, before my casting about, at Paris, ended 
in the renunciation of an ethnographic map of the nature above 
sketched ; owing to the frequency of lacunae, impossible to be filled 
up, in the pictorial gradations of humanity spread over the earth. 
Inaccurate designs of many races, false colorations of most, un- 
authentic exceptions to exactness throughout the remainder, reduced 
the number of reliable portraits to a very small number in published 
works. To the ethnographer some otherwise valuable books, perfect 
as to costumes of nations, are wholly unavailable 663 as regards facial 

682 Catalogue particulier des Livres de Ge'ographie ei de Voyages qui se irouvent dans les 
Biblioihiques du Department de la Marine et des Colonies; Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 8vo, 
1840; vol. III. 

633 Such, for instance, as Georgi's Beschreibung aller Nationum des Russichen Reiehs, St. 
Petersburg, 1776; also republished in smaller edition at Leipzig, 1783; and in four vols. 
London, without plates, 1780: — Reckbbekg, Les Peuplcs de la Russie, &c, with 94 plates 



VABIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 611 

iconography, — the Artists, naturally ignorant of physiognomical 
diversity beyond the small circle of races within their personal 
cognizances, having given European features to every variety of 
man ; so that, according to each designer's country, all nations are 
made to assume French, English, or German faces; often with as 
little regard to foreign human nature as we find in Tailors' or 
Modistes' show-plates of the newest fashions ! Some of the best 
descriptive works contain plates too small for reliance ; in general 
uncolored, or else tinted without regard to exactness; at the same 
time that of whole families of mankind there are no representations 
whatever. It is, in fact, rare to meet with colored plates of races 
worthy of confidence, before the beginning of this century : not that 
I would disparage the efforts made by Cook, La Perouse, Krusenstern, 
and other voyagers, to furnish good copper-plates of several distant 
tribes of men met with in their daring circumnavigations. 

But the man essentially imbued with a sort of instinctive presenti- 
ment of the importance of human iconography, and to whose single 
pencil we still owe more varied representations of mankind over the 
earth than to any individual before or since, without question was 
Choris. 584 Chosen artist to the second Russian voyage round the 
world under Ottoe von Kotzebue in the "R.urick" 585 — 1815-18 — 
favored by a liberal and scientific commander, and aided by a skilful 
naturalist, Adelbert de Chamisso, Choris really availed himself of glo- 
rious opportunities (so frequently deemed unimportant in later mari- 
time expeditions, — compared to the triumphant collection of "new 
species " among oysters, butterflies, or parsleys), and may be right- 
fully styled the father of those ethnological portrait-painters who, 
like Lesueur, have so skilfully illustrated the voyages of Peron (under 
Baudin) Duperrey, De Freycinet, D'Urville, Gaimard, and others. 
It is to Choris's, more than to any other man's labors, that the works 
of Prichard, and Cuvier, as the learned copyists frequently point out, 
owe their iconographic interest : and here it may be conveniently 
stated that, in our Tableau, I have endeavored, as far as possible, to 

of costumes. Many other works, equally defective ethnographically, if excellent for na- 
tional costumes, are in the "King's Library," British Museum. Even some works of the 
great French Navigators — -such as D'Entrecastraux, 1800; De Bougainville, 1837; 
Laplace, 1835; Du Petit Thuars, 1841 — are almost valueless to human iconography, 
however meritorious and important in descriptions, and precious in other branches of 
natural history. 

584 Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde, avec des Portraits de Sauvages d 'Amerique, d'Asie, 
aVAfrique, et des lies du Grand Ocean; Paris, Didot, folio, 1822. Of this work I have used 
four copies at diiferent libraries, two of them uncolored : and, as regards the coloration of 
the other two, one varied materially from the other in tints. 

685 Yoyage of discovery into the South Sea, &c, transl. Lloyd, London, 3 vols. 8vo., 1821. 



612 DISTINCTIONS OBSEKYABLE AMONG 

avoid repeating likenesses published by either authority, except when 
none so good were accessible elsewhere. Even then, in most cases, 
my copies are taken from, or have been compared with the original 
engravings, as the reference under each head indicates. 

Compelled to relinquish, owing to absence of sufficient materials, 
my first idea of an ethnographic map, the next best substitute was 
suggested by J. Achille Compte's folio sheet ; ^ which, considering 
that it is now twenty-five years old, was the ablest condensation of 
its day. Its errors have been indicated by Jacquinot; and, besides it 
gives undue preponderance to Oceanic types when other parts of the 
world possess equal claims for representation. " One sees a black 
of Vanikoro drawn as the type of the Polynesian brown race ; below 
it, another native of Vanikoro represents the Malay branch. Natives 
of New-Ireland serve at one and the same time for the type of the 
Polynesian race and for the black Oceanic race I" 597 Without copy- 
ing any of the heads published by so good an authority, I have in 
part availed myself of Compte's columnar arrangement and nomen- 
clature, in the third letter-press column of our Tableau. 

Among the various desiderata towards exactness in ethnic icono- 
graphy, rank two necessities: — 1st, that the same portrait should at 
least be photographed both in front view and -profile; 2d, that these 
photographs should not be restricted to the male sex, but that their 
females should always accompany them ; inasmuch as, from the rape 
of the Sabines down to Captain Bligh's mutineers, — among Turks 
universally, as well as in instances of American nations cited by Mc- 
Culloh 588 — the women of a given nation often differ totally in type 
from their masculine possessors. Of this last contingency there exist 
countless instances, met with even in our own every-day experiences. 
The advantage of adding a back view of each individual has been 
shown by Debret ; m and it is the rule followed, where possible, by 
M. Rousseau. 590 One universal savant, 591 and one equally-universal 
comparative anatomist, 592 feel the importance of the first requirement. 

586 Races Humaines, distributes en un Tableau Me'thodique, "adopts par le Conseil royal de 
l'lnstruction Publique;" Paris, 1840: — being PI. I. of his Regne Animal, 1832. 

587 Jacquinot, Eludes sur VHistoire Naturelle de V Homme ; These pour le Doctorat en Me- 
dicine, Paris, 4to., 1848; p. 117. 

588 Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America, 
Baltimore, 8vo., 1829; pp. 34-5, &c. See a spirited sketch of the, rape of a white woman, 
by "Pehuenches," in Po3ppig's Reise in Chili, &c, Atlas fol., 1835, PI. 7. 

589 Voyage Piltoresque au Bresil, ii. pp. 114-5, PI. xii. 

590 At the Jardin des Plantes; as in several photographs of Hottentots, &c, I owe to his 
complaisance. 

591 Alfred Maury, Questions relatives <2 V Ethnologic, ancienne de la France — Extrait de l'An- 
nuaire de la Soc. Imp. des Antiquaires de France pour 1852 — Paris, 18mo., 1853 ; pp. 9-10. 

592 Straus-Durckheim, Theohgie de la Nature, Paris, 8vo., 1852; III, note xxx, Races 
humaines ; pp. 318-9, 324. 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 613 

The former presses French antiquaries with the following language 
— " In the portraits that we demand from our correspondents, they 
should adhere both to giving front views, so as to enable the physi- 
ognomy to be judged; and profile, in order to show the direction of 
the lines of the face, the disposal of the forehead, the facial angle, 
the degree of hollowness of the eye in relation to the 'arcade souci- 
liere,' the prominence of the chin. It is certain that these details of 
the countenance, in appearance insignificant, exert a great influence 
upon the ensemble of the features. By way of example, we would 
instigate remark that the cavity at the root of the nose, in relation to 
the slope of the forehead, is of itself a characteristic that distinguishes 
certain races from others. The Greeks, to judge by the statues they 
have left us, did not represent this cavity; so pronounced, on the 
contrary, in sundry of our own provinces. Some physiologists have 
attributed this character to mixture with the Germanic race, in which 
it is observed in considerably high degree. There are lines, even 
some simple wrinkles, that stamp a given physiognomy with its 
national impress. The Shlavic race notably distinguishes itself, ordi- 
narily, among men more than thirty years old, by a furrow which 
cuts the whole cheek in a quasi-vertical sense." 

The subjoined authority stands so high among comparative anato- 
mists, that its weight, in support of the polygenistic view, deserves 
attention. Straus-Durckheim says: " In treating this subject [Human 
Races], as it ought to be, simply as a question of pure zoology, and 
upon applying to it the same principles as to the determination of 
other species of animals belonging to one genus, one arrives, in fact, 
at really recognizing rnauy very distinct human species, of which 
the number cannot yet be fixed ; on one account, because the interior 
of the continents of Africa, Australia, and even of America, is not 
sufficiently known ; and on another, that we do not possess even 
sufficient data about the distinctive characters of a large number 
already known 

"We are acquainted indeed with a few races, such as the Caucasian and the Negro; but 
many others are very poorly indicated, even by Ethnographers, to such a degree that every- 
thing remains still to be done. 

" The greater number of travellers who, until now, have gone over distant countries in 
which exist races of men more or less distinct, have indeed brought back some drawings ; 
and, in these later times, even busts moulded upon nature ; but more frequently they have 
confined themselves to giving the portraits of the Chiefs about whom they spoke in relating 
their voyages ; or else, they have represented a few common individuals, some taken at 
random, and the others on account of whatever may have been extraordinary in their phy- 
siognomy; whereas it is precisely the portraits of those who present the most vulgar [or 
normal] faces and forms among each people which it is essential to make known ; their 
features oifering, through this very circumstance, the true characteristics of their races, 
inasmuch as best resembling the greater number of individuals. * * * " Now, these various 



614 DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

directions of the divers parts of the head, -which it would be so important to know well in 
order to determine the differences that exist between human species, cannot be thoroughly 
indicated except in portraits done exactly in profile ; in the same manner that the exact 
proportions of width cannot be properly given save through portraits in full front view ; 
and this is precisely that which one does not find but very exceptionally in ethnographio 
works, in which heads are generally represented at three-quarter view ; with the intention 
of making known at one and the same time the proportions of all parts, whereas through 
sach arrangement they satisfy nothing ; the three-quarters not permitting any proportion 
to be exactly caught, every feature becoming foreshortened to the beholder." 

With full consciousness of these requirements, I had hoped that, 
through the multitude of works consulted, some kind of uniformity, 
as regards front and profile views of the same head, might have been 
achieved for a certain number of races. Here again disappointment 
was the issue. Aside from Dumoutier's Anthropologic wherein chiefly 
Oceanic busts are thus figured, there are not a dozen instances 593 
where pains have been taken to supply this radical necessity in eth- 
nology. There are not, out of these, more than half the number 
colored; nor, finally, as illustrative of the poverty of ethnographical 
resources, out of a collection of some 400 heads of races procured, 
was it possible, on reducing the number even to 54 specimens, to 
avoid including some faces (such as ISTos. 11, 13, 20, 30, 34, &c.) drawn 
at three-quarters, under the penalty of either a blank in the series or 
of filling the place with a less characteristic sample. And yet, with 
an intrepidity which ignorance of these simple facts may explain, but 
can never justify, whole volumes have been written to prove "the 
unity of the human species," — when science does not possess half the 
requisite materials for ethnographic comparisons, and at the very 
day that the best naturalists will frankly and honestly tell you how, 
t he historical evidences (only scientific criteria) of permanency of type 
being excluded, they feel rather uncertain where "species" is to be 
found in any department of zoology. Polygenism no less than 
monogenism, as regards humanity's origination, depends, therefore, 
like all similar zoological questions, upon history — itself a science 
essentially human. The whole controversy concerning the unity or 
the diversity of mankind's "species" is consequently bounded by a 
circle, of which, after all, human history can but vaguely indicate the 
circumference; and the only ultimate result obtained from the an- 
alysis of such arguments resolves itself, as in all circular arguments, 
into a question of probabilities. The brothers Humboldt (ubi supra) 
reject, as ante-historical, all myths, fiction, and tradition, that pretend 
to explain the origin of mankind. Perfectly coinciding with these 

593 My portfolio embraces them all, I believe, from the publications of Cuvier, Pe"ron, 
D'Orbigny, D'Avezac, De Middendorf, Siebold, and two or three others. 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 615 

luminaries of our XlXth century in such repudiation of the only 
criterion of "species" which real history is powerless to elucidate, 
belief and unbelief, as to polygenism or monogenism, seem to me 
equally speculative, equally abortive, in a matter utterly beyond 
the research of human history, — as this term is understood during 
the present solar revolution, ecclesiastically styled a. d. 1857. 

I roughly estimate the amount of iconographic stock, available to 
ethnology and contained in published works, at about 600 portraits. 
Of these not more than half are colored, many of them not reliably ; 
whilst a large proportion of those uncolored are more or less defec- 
•tive. In this estimate, European nations of the three types, — Teutonic, 
Celtic and Sclavonic — are of course excluded ; because biographical, 
historical and other publications, aside from portrait-galleries, furnish 
abundance to illustrate these the most civilized races of the world. 
Some American, portions of African, perhaps all the Australian, the 
greater number of Polynesian, certain Malayan, Indo-Chinese, 
Chinese, Japanese, &c, are well represented ; but vast iconographic 
blanks in the varied nationalities of Asia and Africa still remain 
among "terras incognitse," ethnologically speaking far more than 
even geographically. For instance, where has there been published 
a reliable colored portrait of a Yukag'ir ? where that of a true Berber f mi 
Central Arabian tribes have no authentic representative, save in the 
likeness of Abd- Allah ebn Souhood, the Wah'abee ; 595 and so on of whole 
nations in other regions. Indeed, by way of testing the accuracy of 
this statement, let the reader take the third column of our "Tableau," 
wherein an attempt has been made, chiefly through descriptions, to 
group mankind physiologically. Sixty-five distinguishable families, 
out of perhaps hundreds unmentioned, are there enumerated. Let 
him only try to find for each of these a reliable colored portrait, suit- 
able to ethnology (Hamilton Smith, Prichard and Latham, inclusive), 
— his first difficulty will be to settle the difference iconographically 
between a "Lapp" and a "Finn." I have failed in my efforts to 
obtain one of the former ; of the latter (!Nb. 7) I am by no means 
certain. 596 

According to modern statisticians, the population of the world is 
calculated to exceed 1200 millions. About 600, more or less available, 
ethnological portraits are the limit of my estimate of public icono- 

594 Those (about 40, I think) procured by the Exploration scientifique en Algerie are inedited. 
Very beautiful they are, in the Parisian Galerie Anthropologique. It will be noted that I 
use the terms " reliable colored portraits" accessible through publications. The treasures 
contained in private portfolios do not, of course, enter into this category, being inaccessible. 

695 Mengin, Op. cit. (supra, note 576). 

696 See what Dr. Meigs says (Chap. Ill, pp. 267-70, ante). 



616 DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG 

graphical property, bearing upon types of man — Europeans hardly 
included — now in existence. This enables ethnography at the 
present advanced day to boast, that she possesses about half an indi- 
vidual per million to represent all Mankind ! whereas, out of 216 
known species of Monkeys, there are not a dozen of which naturalists 
do not possess exact and elegant delineations. And yet, steeped in 
the slough of our common ignorance, it is pretended to give us 
systems vindicating the "unity of the human species." 

Under all these lamentable deficiencies, my attempt reduces itself 
to an exhibition of 54 of the best characterized ethnographic portraits 
condensible into a "Tableau." Their number [fifty-four) is purely 
accidental. No cabalistic enigma underlies its selection, which was 
superinduced merely by the mechanical eligibilities considered requi- 
site by our publishers. What may have been the labor incurred to 
present even so small a number at one view, may be inferred through 
the Table of References. Such as it is, the reader will find nothing 
yet published comparable to it for attempted accuracy ; at the same 
time that none can be more alive than myself to its defects, nor will 
be more happy to hail the publication of something better within the 
limited price of this present volume. Had not this last inexorable 
condition been part of our publishing arrangements, my own port- 
folio and note-books could have supplied for every row (except for 
the Australian realm, which seems tolerably complete in 6 specimens) 
18 different heads, each typical of a race, in lieu of only 6 ; and 
then, through 132 colored portraits, a commencement might have 
been made to portray, at one view, the earth's known inhabitants ; 
leaving to future collectors the task of adding other types, in the 
ratio either of their discovery or of their acquisition, to ethnic icono- 
graphy. With these remarks, the "Tableau" is submitted to liberal 
criticism ; which will perceive the reason why so many essential and 
well-known types are unavoidably excluded, in the fact that 132 
distinct things cannot be compressed into a space adapted to 54. 

A FEW CLOSING OBSERVATIONS. 

Notwithstanding that perfectly-traced fac-similes, and sometimes 
the original plates and photographs themselves, were placed in 
the hands of the best lithographic establishment in this city, rigid 
comparison with a few of the originals referred to in the explanatory 
text, will prove what has been previously deplored regarding ethno- 
logical portraits generally, viz., that a merely artistic eye, untrained 
in this new "specialite" of art, is unable even to copy with absolute 
correctness. A draughtsman, accustomed to draw solely European 



VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 617 

faces, cannot, without long practice and a peculiar instinct for race- 
iconography, seize, on so small a scale as such drawings must he 
made, the delicate distinctions between ethnic lineaments perceived 
by the eye of an anthropologist. In consequence, it has happened 
in our Tableau, that, through infinitesimal touches of his pencil, 
there are few heads (in the eyes especially) which have not been more 
or less Uuropeanized by the artist. These defects are herein irre- 
mediable ; nor would I call attention to them, but to meet a possible 
(nay, very probable) charge, that these portraits have been tampered 
with in order to favor Dr. Nott's and my common polygenistic 
views: whereas, on the contrary, the truth is, that artistic execution, 
by softening down diversities of feature, palpable in the originals, 
seems unconsciously to have labored rather to gratify the yearnings 
and bonhomie of philanthropists and monogenists. 

In respect to the coloring, also, although to each face I have ap- 
pended authority for its hue, much allowance should be made for a 
book the price of which, to the American subscriber, must not 
exceed $5. The colorist (who has performed her part extremely 
well) had to give 53 distinct tints to 54 (the Tasmanians, ISTos. 53, 54, 
being one color) different faces, — each, too, restricted to one stroke 
of her brush. To have attempted the coloration of eyes, hair, or 
dress, would have made this volume cost half as much again. Never- 
theless, I have deposited with our publishers one standard and 
completely-colored copy, critically executed by my wife, and they 
tell me that any one desirous of possessing our "Ethnographic 
Tableau," perfectly colored, varnished, and mounted upon rollers, can 
obtain such copy on application to them, and paying the expense 
thereof. 

As for the wood-cuts, — in our present, no less than in our former 
volume — I am free to say, that the only extenuation, for often- 
stupid deviations from perfectly-drawn originals, lies simply in the 
fact, that where (owing to bibliothecal deficiencies in a given spot 
of our yet new and youthful American republic) the plates them- 
selves could not be furnished to the engraver, my wife's pencil-marks 
on the box-wood "blocks" having been rubbed more or less in our 
travels, — or, by carelessness, after their delivery to the wood-cutter 
— "pencils," under such circumstances, are treacherous and slip- 
pery. Hence our collaborators, Messrs. Pulszky and Meigs, I am 
sure, will be charitable enough to overlook any accidental drawbacks 
to the attainment of that correctness, which was equally desired by 
Mrs. Gliddon, Dr. Nott, and myself. The reader will also, I trust, 
be so considerate as to overlook such blemishes in the artistic, 
cranioscopic, and typograpical exactitude of our book. 



618 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

ON THE 
ETHNOGRAPHIC TABLEAU, 

EXHIBITINQ 

SPECIMENS OF VARIOUS RACES OF MANKIND. 



Adopting entirely, for my own part, Prof. Agassiz's zoological dis- 
tribution of animals into REALMS, — subdivided into Faunae — I bad 
prepared prefatory observations on eacb of tbe former, whicb lack of 
space now obliges me to reduce to a minimum consistent witb per- 
spicacity. 

So many have been tbe mistakes committed (even by good scbolars), 
as regards tbe honored Professor's meaning, in the terms "Realms" 
and " Faunse," 597 that the reader's attention is again especially invited 
to the " Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World, and 
their relation to the different Types of Man ;" which, with its tableau 
and map, forms a prominent feature in Kbit's and my Types of Man- 
hind. 

It is upon such inferred knowledge, on the reader's part, that our 
"Ethnographic Tableau" has been projected. The first column of 
letter-press contains Prof. Agassiz's "Geographical distribution:" — 
the second Dr. Meigs's " Cranioscopic examples:" — the third my 

597 1. A. D'Abbadie (Observations sur VOuvrage intitule: Types of Mankind, par MM. Noil 
and Gliddon — Bulletin de la Soc. de Geographic, No. 55, Juillet, Paris, 1855, p. 41) — "M. 
Agassiz adniet huit types humains primitifs." Refuted by M. A. Mauky, in the same Jour- 
nal (pp. 46-51). 2. Heywood (translation of Von Bohlen's Inlrod. to the Book of Genesis, 
London, 8vo, 1855; II, appendix 2, p. 278) — "Hottentot realm;" instead of fauna. 3. A 
writer (Charleston Medical Journal, 1855 — " An Examination of Prof. Agassiz's Sketch," &c.) 
confounds realms with fauna in a manner that, shows he does not even eompi-ehend termino- 
logy [e.g., "Mongolian realm" (p. 36) — "Prof. A. has formed two realms in Africa;" 
"Hottentot realm" (p. 37] : but inasmuch as this would-be naturalist duly received a quietus 
at the hands of Luke Bur.ee (Charleston Med. Journ., July, 1856, Art. I), he may remain 
dropped where he was long ago, by Morton and by myself (Types of Mankind, pp. lvi and 
628, note 210). 4. Cull (Address to the Ethnological Society of London, 1854, p. 8) — "5. 
The Negro realm. 6. The Hottentot realm." No such classes occur in Prof. Agassiz's paper. 
5. Anon. (Westminster Review, No. XVIII, April, 1856; Art. Ill, p. 364) — "eight realms, 
* * * Hottentot," as one of them, in lieu of fauna. 6. Anon. (London Athenaeum, June 17, 
1854, Review) — [Prof. Agassiz] "divides mankind into eight types, each of which has its 
realm, with its peculiar animal inhabitants. They are as follows : — 1. Arctic ; — 2. Mongol ; 
— 3. European; — 4. American; — 5. African; — 6. Hottentot; — 7. Malayan; — 8. Austra- 
lian," &c. 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 619 

individual conception of "Mankind, grouped physiologically:" — and 
the fourth a synopsis, by myself, of the "Linguistic distinctions" 
deducible from M. Alfred Maury's Chapter I, in the present volume. 
I proceed to succinct remarks on the "Realms" themselves; fol- 
lowing each by specification of the sources whence each human por- 
trait has been derived. Precision is the only goal attempted to be 
reached by this tinted-Tableau's compiler: and the primary fact that 
will be acquired by its inspector, at first glance, will be the destruc- 
tion of any hypotheses he may have formed concerning the alleged 
action of solar influence (as per Latitude and Longitude) upon Na- 
ture's aboriginal coloration of the human skin [any greater than upon 
that of the simice — see Monkey-chart] among her "types" and "races" 
of the genus Homo. 



I. 

ARCTIC REALM. 
(Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) 

The newest — and by far the best — definitions known to me of the several characteristics 
of the human inhabitants of the Hyperborean zone, being already supplied by our collabo- 
rator Dr. Meigs [supra, Chapter III, pp. 156, 168), I will not detract from the merit of this 
first utterance of special studies on the Polar region, which he has been prosecuting for some 
time by doing more than inviting re-perusal of his remarks ; coupled with reference to that 
excellent little compendium — "Productions of 'Zones,' illustrated and described" (10 Plates 
and 10 pamphlets, 18mo — published by Myers & Co., London, 1854). 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 

No. 1. — ESKIMO. 

[" TaWccdiktceeta, Eskimaux of Igloolik :" — Parry, 2d Voyage, " Fury and Hecla;" London, 1824, 
p. 391.] 

Colored from Ross, Voy. Baffin's Bay — "Arctic Highlander — Ervick, Native 
of Prince Regent's Bay." 

Compare Martin, Nat. Eisl. of Man and Monkeys, London, 1841, p. 278, fig. 213. 

No. 2. — TCH TJTKTCHI. 

[Inedikd, — from my friend Mr. Edward M. Kern, artist in the recent Voyage of the U. S. Corvette 
" Vincennes," Capt. Bodgers, to the North Pacific, 1853-6. See the remarks of Dr. Meigs (supra, 
Chapter III) on Fig. 12.] 

Compare Desmoulins, Races Surnames, 1826; PI. I, from Choeis: — Hooper 
(Tents of the Tuski, London, 8vo, 1853) gives plates too small for reliance; but 
observes, " Tchouski, Tchuktche, Tchutski, Tchekto, and similar appellations, 
I believe to have arisen from the word Tuski, meaning a confederation or bro- 
therhood." He divides them into "the Reindeer Tuski," and "the fishing, 
or alien Tuski" — "two distinct races, or, at least, branches, * * * differing 
in language, appearance, and many details of dress and occupation (p. 34)." 



620 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

No. 3. — KOEIAK. 

[" Inhabitants of Kotzebue Sound :" — De Kotzebue, Voy. of Discovery, N. E. Passage., in Russian 
S. " Rurick," 1815-18 ; transl. Lloyd, London, 1S21 ; I, Pi. 1.] 

Compare Beechey ( Voyage to the Northern Ocean and Beering's Strait, Lon- 
don, 4to, 1831, 1, p. 250 seq., II, pp. 567-76), who, in describing the Esquimaux, 
eastern and western, says, " both people being descended from the same stock." 

No. 4. — ALEOTJTIAN. 

[" Habitant des lies Aleoutiennes :" — Choris, Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde (1815-1S) ; Paris, 
fol., 1822, PI. Ill, 6"= livraison.] 

Compare " a man of Kadiak" (PI. YI, in Martin Saurr's Account of a Geog. 
. and Aslronom. Exped. to the Northern Parts of Russia, by Comm. J. Billings, 
1785-94; London, 4to, 1802.) 

No. 5.— AINO. 

[" Naturel de la cote septentrionale de Jesso :" — De Krusenstern, Voyage autour du Monde, 1803-6, 
in the Russian S. " Nadiejeda and Neva" — transl. Eyries, Paris, 1821 ; Atlas 4to, PI. XV, 1 : col- 
lated with PI. LXXIX, of the Russian folio original, St. Petersburg, 1813.] 

Colored, " teint brun verdatre foncey according to Desmoulins (op. cit., pp. 
165, 286). De Krusenstern (II, pp. 89-90, 98-9) considers the hairiness of 
these A'inos to have been exaggerated, and says their color is " teint brunfonce et 
presque noir." Upon showing our colored head, No. 5, to my friend Lieut. 
Habersham, he tells me that it does very well. Already (vide supra, " Prefatory 
Remarks"), I have been enabled, through his kindness and zeal for science, to 
present a wood-cut exhibiting the true characteristics of a race so little known 
as these A'inos. Here is Lieut. Habersham's description : — 

" The hairy endowments of these people are by no means so extensive as some 
early writers lead one to suppose. As a general rule, they shave the front of 
the head d, la Japanese, and though the remaining hair is undoubtedly very 
thick and coarse, yet it is also very straight, and owes its bushy appearance to 
the simple fact of constant scratching and seldom combing. This remaining 
hair they part in the middle, and allow to grow within an inch of the shoulder. 
The prevailing hue is black, but it often possesses a brownish cast, and these 
exceptions cannot be owing to the sun, as it is but reasonable to suppose that 
they suffer a like exposure from infancy up. Like the hair, their beard is bushy, 
and from the same causes. It is generally black, but often brownish, and seldom 
exceeds five or six inches in length. I only saw one case where it reached more 
than half-way to the waist ; and here the owner was evidently proud of its great 
length, as he had it twisted into innumerable small ringlets, well greased, and 
kept in something like order. His hair, however, was as bushy as that of any 
other. As this individual was evidently the most "hairy Kurile" of the party, 
we selected him as the one most likely to substantiate the assertion of Broughton 
in regard to "their bodies being almost universally covered with long, black 
hair." He readily bared his arms and shoulders for inspection, and (if I except 
a tuft of hair on each shoulder-blade, of the size of one's hand) we found his 
body to be no more hairy than that of several of our own men. The existence 
of those two tufts of hair caused us to examine several others, which examina- 
tions established his as an isolated case. 

"Their beard, which grows well up under the rather retreating eye, their bushy 
brows, and generally wild appearance and expression of countenance, give them 
a most savage look, singularly at variance with their mild, almost cringing, 
manners. "When drinking, they have a habit of lifting the hanging mustache 
over the nose, and it was this practice, I suppose, which caused an early writer 
to say, "their beards are so long as to require lifting up." Though undoubt- 
edly below the middle height as a general rule, I still saw several who would be 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 621 

called quite large men in any country; and, though the average height be not 
more than "five feet two or four inches," they make up the difference in an 
abundance of muscle. They are a well-formed race, with the usual powers of 
endurance accorded to savages, indicated in their expansive chests and swelling 
muscles. Their features partake more of the European cast than any other. 
They are generally regular, some even noble, while all are devoid of that expres- 
sion of treacherous cunning which stands out in such bold relief from the faces 
of their masters — the Japanese and Northern Chinese. I cannot but agree with 
La Perouse as to their superiority over those nations. * * * 

"The Ainos are unpleasantly remarkable as a people in two respects, — viz. : 
the primitive nature of their costume, and their extreme filthiness of person. 
I doubt if an Ainu ever washes ; hence the existence of vermin in everything 
that pertains to them, as well as a great variety of cutaneous diseases, for which 
they appear to have few or no remedies. There is another side to the picture, 
however, and it is a bright one. Their moral and social qualities, as exhibited 
both in their intercourse with each other and with strangers, are beautiful to 
behold. * * * 

"I cannot account for Broughton's assertion in regard to their being of "a 
light copper-color," unless he referred to a few isolated cases. As I have pre- 
viously remarked, we saw several hundred men, women, and children, and these 
were all of a dark brotvnish-black, with one exception ; which exception was a 
male adult, strongly suspected of being a half-breed." {Op. cit., pp. 311—14.) 

No. 6. — SAMOYEDE. 

[" GovyrUa, Kanin-Samojeden :" — De Middendorf, Die Samojeden in St. Petersburg, PI. XIV. (Yide 
Bulletin de la Sac. Eihnologique. de Paris, 1847, 1, pp. 259, 295-7, 300-7 ; and St. Petersburg Zcitung, 
1847, Nos. 77, 78.] 

Colored from Prince Demidoff's collection in the Galerie Anthropologique, Jar- 
din des Plantes, Paris, 1855. 

Compare Desmoulins, op. cit., pp. 261-6: — Latham, Native Races of the Rus- 
sian Empire, London, 1854, pp. 112-21: — Max-Muller, Languages of the Seat 
of War, London, 1855 ; 2d ed., pp. 118-23. 



II. 

ASIATIC REALM, 
(Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.) 

"Asia Polyglotta" (Elaproth, Sprach Atlas, Paris, fol., 1823; and Atlas of his Tableaux 
historiques de I'Asie, Paris, fol., 1826; — with their perspicuous maps of Asia at different 
periods, for all sources — )" seems likely to become "Asia Polygenea," whenever anthropo- 
logy shall possess, about her multiform human occupants, either the accurate data now 
acquired for elucidating the Egyptians,the Arabs, the Hebrews, the Berbers, and the Chinese, 
— or the precise knowledge gained in her inferior departments of zoology. Almost every- 
thing known about Asiatic ethnography is contained within the present and our former 
work, taking in view the references accompanying any statement in both. 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 

No. 7.— KAMTSCHADAU3. 

[Pbichard, Natural Bist. of Man, London, 1855: ed. Norris; i. p. 224, PI. ix.— from CilOEIS.] 

On these I have nothing to add to Dr. Meigs's remarks in Chapter III. 



622 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

No. 8. — St. LAURENT-ISLANDER. 

[ChoriSj op. cit, liv. 7°., PI. xvi.; from Behring'a Straits, American side.] 

Von Langsdorff (Voy. and Travels, London, 4to. 1813, II, pp. 31, 111-12) 
Doctor to Kotzebue, says of the Oonalaskans, " a sort of middle race between 
the Mongol-Tartars and the North Americans " — and of the Koluschians, "they 
do not appear to have the least affinity with the Mongol race:" — skin, when 
clean, nearly fair. 

No. 9. — TARTAR. 

["Chef Tartare :" — De Erusenstern, op. cit., PI. xvii. ; — corrected by Russian original, Tab. lxxxii.] 
Colored by descriptions of the ancient "Ou-Sioun," "Ting-Lings," &c, 
according to Chinese historians cited by Klaproth ( Tableaux hist, de VAsie, pp. 
123-5, 162, &c.) 

Compare Desmodiins, op. cit., pp. 74-5, 80, 87, 163; — and other authorities 
in Jardot {Revolutions des Peuples de VAsie Moyenne, Paris, 1839; ii.), "Tab- 
leau synoptique, chronologique et par Race." De Erusenstern (transl. Ey- 
ries, 1821, ii. pp. 208-11, 222-6), at the peninsula of Sakhalin (Map, PI. 28), 
coast of Tartary — narrates how the Tartars, of whom the above is a chief, had 
driven out and extirpated the "aborigines, or Ai'nos," and were a totally dis- 
tinct race. 

For Tartar ethnography around the Black Sea, consult Hommaire be Hell 
(Les Slippesde la mer Caspienne, Paris, 3 vols., 1845) passim. 

No. 10. — CHINESE. 

["Un Chinois" — Barrow, Voyage en Chine (with Macartney), transl. Castera, Paris, 1805; Atlas, 
4to., PI. iv.; and i. pp. 77-82.] 

There are many forms of Chinamen, on which I have no space to enlarge ; 
but this is a good normal type. 

No. 11. — KALMUK. 

[Derivation uncertain.] 

Colored from Hamilton Smith, Nat. Hist, of the Human Species, Edinburgh, 
1848; "Swarthy Kalmucks, Elenth," PI. 28, p. 462. 

Compare Martin, op. cit., pp. 271-3, fig. 207: — Cuvier, Atlas, Mammifires. 

The best descriptions are in a work by an anonymous hut very correct com- 
piler ( Voyages chez te Peuples Kalmoucks et les Tartares, avec 23 figures et 2 
cartes geographiques, Berne, 1792, 8vo., — p. 169 in particular). After indi- 
cating the clear distinctions, in types and tongues, between the various races 
of Caspian Asia, he quotes La Motrate's surprise, " d'avoir trouve\ presque sous 
le meme climat, et dans le meme air, les Circassiens, le plus beau peuple du 
monde, au milieu des Noghaiens et des Kalmoucks, qui sont de vrais monstres 
de laideur." 

No. 12. — TTJDA. 

["A man of the Tuda race ;" Nilagiri Hills, — Museum Royal Asiatic Society : Prichard, Researches 
into the Physical History of Manldnd: — and Nat. Hist, of Man, 1855, PI. xi. p. 353-4.] 

On all these Dravidian tribes, see Maury's Chap. I., pp. fi2-5 ; and my Chap- 
ter V., pp. 612-13. The best descriptions are in Sketch of Assam (supra, note 345 
514) ; but the colored portraits are too small. 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 623 

III. 

EUROPEAN REALM. 
(Nos. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,-19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.) 

The profound author of " Civil Liberty and Self Government " — ablest exponent of human 
rights as understood in our XlXth century by Anglo-Saxons — has expressed the embarrass- 
ments of nomenclature in the following note : — 

" I ask permission to draw the attention of the scholar to a subject which appears to me 
important. 1 have used the term Western History, yet it is so indistinct that I must ex- 
plain what is meant by it. It ought not to be so. I mean by western history, the history 
of all historically active, non-Asiatic nations and tribes — the history of the Europeans and 
their descendants in other parts of the world. In the grouping and division of comprehen- 
sive subjects, clearness depends in a great measure upon the distinctness of well-chosen 
terms. Many students of civilization have probably felt with me the desirableness of a con- 
cise term, which should comprehend within the bounds of one word, capable of furnishing 
us with an acceptable adjective, the whole of the western Caucasian portion of mankind — 
the Europeans and all their descendants in whatever part of the world, in America, Austra- 
lia, Africa, India, the Indian Archipelago and the Pacific Islands. It is an idea which con- 
stantly recurs, and makes the necessity of a proper and brief term daily felt. Bacon said 
that "the wise question is half the science," and may we not add that a wise division and 
apt terminology is its completion? In my private papers I use the term Occidental, in a 
sufficiently natural contradistinction to Oriental. But Occidental, like Western, indicates 
geographical position ; nor did I feel otherwise authorized to use it here. Europides, would 
not be readily accepted either. Japhethian would comprehend more tribes than we wish 
to designate. That some term or other must soon be adopted seems to me clear, and I am 
ready to accept any expressive name formed in the spirit and according to the taste of our 
language. The chemist and natural historian are not the only ones that stand in need of 
distinct names for their subjects, but they are less exacting than scholars." — Op. cit., Phi- 
ladelphia, 8vo., 1853, i. pp. 30-1. 

Soon after the issue of "Types of Mankind," a pleasant rencontre here with Prof. Fran- 
cis Lieber led to conversation between us, wherein it was remarked, that the name of a 
mythic daughter of an ante-historic king of Phoenicia (Agenor), — transported by Jupiter in 
the form of a natatory milk-white bull to the Isle of Candia — which, as Eitkopa, had not 
yet become applied geographically to "Europe" in the times of Homer, should have given 
birth to an adjective — "European" — that (like Caucasian, Turanian, &c, supra, note 460) 
now designates, as if they were an ethnic unit, types of man historically originating in three 
distinct Realms (Arctic, Asiatic, and European properly so-called), and races as essentially 
diverse from each other as the Faunae of these Realms themselves : at the same time that, 
as Bochart [Phaleg, IV. 33) long ago perceived, such nations differ entirely from the men 
of a fourth Realm — "quia Europoza Africanos candore faciei multum superant." 

Prof. Lieber was so good as to leave with me (13th July, 1854) a memorandum embody- 
ing the result of our conference : — 

" P. S. I may add that I have thought of the following names, all of which seem poor 
to me — 

Japhelians (includes too much) ; 
Dysi- Caucasians (bad) ; 
Bupero- Caucasians (poor) ; 
Europa- Caucasians (poorer). 



624 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

" I really think Europidians is the least objectionable, although I own it would induce 
people, at first glance, to suppose that it includes the descendants of Europeans only, 
whereas the name ought to include Europeans and all their descendants. F. L." 

Such are the difficulties. I do not propose to resolve them : but would inquire of fellow- 
ethnologists — inasmuch as we now know that, in primordial Europe, there once existed 
(prior to the tripartite Celtic, Indo-Gerinan, and Shlavic, immigrations), men whose silcx- 
instruments lie entombed in French diluvial drift, men whose humatile vestiges are found 
in ossuaries and bone-caverns, men who in Anglia and in Scandinavia preceded the Kelt ; 
just as there are still living, in modern Europe, their Basque and Albanian, amid other, 
successors — whether it might not be convenient to adopt Prof. Lieber's term " Europidians" 
(or, Europidce), by way of distinguishing such primary human stratifications from the 
secondary, now comprised in the current word "Europeans" ? 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 
No. 13. — FINN. 

f" Jannes Holm," Norway Laplander: — Hamilton Smith, op. cit., PI. XXX., p. 463; "The diminu- 
tive Laplander of Norway, similarly marked with Finnic interunion" — compare pp. 318-20.J 

'"Dan and Angul, says the venerable historian Saxo-Grammaticus, were 
brothers: 1 " — that is to say, the Danes and the English descend from one ances- 
try. Angelm, whence the Angles came to Anglia, lies in Denmark proper; 
and the Jutes, Jutlanders, came over to England with the Saxons." (Elt.es- 
mere, op. cit. (supra, note 532) p. 1 : — Also, for " Norman names," consult Me- 
moires de la Soc. R. des Antiquaries du Nord, Copenhagen, 8vo., 1852.) [See 
p. 434, ante.] 

" With regard to externals," says the translator of Geoegi (Russia, or a com- 
plete Historical account of all the Nations which compose that empire, London, 8vo., 
1780, i. p. 37, 45), "the Finns differ nothing from the Laplanders" — being 
flat against the observations of Capell Brooks! But the separation of the 
Finns from the Laplanders is supposed to have taken place in the 13th cen- 
tury, after the forcible conversion of the former to Christianity. However, 
the very best work on all the Russian peoples is Count Chables de Rech- 
berg's (Les Peuples de la Russie, &c. — with 94 figures, Paris, 2 vols, fol., — with- 
out date, but during the reign of Nicholas). He says (i. p. 6), " How many 
nations, how many religions, how many tongues, what varied customs in this 
immense State ! Let its diverse habitants be compared, and what distances 
between their forms, their manner of living, their costumes, their tongues, their 
opinions ! "What a difference, for instance, betwixt the Livonian and the Kal- 
mouk, betwixt the Russ and the Samoiede, betwixt the Finn and the Caucasian, 
betwixt the Aleutian and the Cossack! What divers degrees of civilization, 
from the Samoiede, who merely, so to say, vegetates in his smoky hut, to the 
affluent inhabitant of St. Petersburg or of Moscow, who expresses himself in the 
language of Voltaire almost equally to a Parisian!" He enumerates 99 races, 
grouped into five types. It must be from this work's suggestions that Prince 
Demidoff created that beautiful series of colored casts of Russian races now 
in the Galerie Anthropologique. 

No. 14. — ICELANDER. 

["Pe'fcur Olaffsen. Pecheur de Rekiavik : — Gaimard, Voy. en Maude ei en Givcnlande, Corvette 
" Recherche " (1S35-6), Paris, 1840 ; fol. Atlas hist., I.] 

Colored by descriptions. Vide supra, Chap. V., pp. 584-5. 

No. 15. — BARON CUTTER. 

[From lithograph of his portrait by Maurin.) 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 625 

" George Cuvier, the first of all descriptive anatomists, and the scientific 
man who first, after Aristotle, applied the art of anatomy to general science, 
was born on the 23d of August, 1769, at Montbeliard, a small and originally 
a German town, but long since incorporated within the French territories. He 
was a native of Wirtemberg, a German in fact, and not a Frenchman in any sense 
of the term, saving a political one. The family came originally from a village 
of the Jura, bearing the same name, of Swiss origin therefore, and a native 
of the country which gave birth to Agassiz. In personal appearance he 
much resembled a Dane, or North German, to which race he really belonged. 
Cuvier then was a German, a man of the German race, an adopted son of France, 
but not a Celtic man [nor a Keli], not a Frenchman. In character he was in 
fact the antithesis of their race, and how he assorted and consorted with them 
it is difficult to say. Calm, systematic, a lover of the most perfect order, 
methodical beyond all men I have ever seen, collective and accumulative in a sci- 
entific point of view, his destinies called him to play a grand part in the midst 
of a non-accumulative race, a race with whom order is the exception, disorder 
the rule. But his place was in the Academy, into which neither dema- 
gogues nor priests can enter. Around him sat La Place, Arago, Gay-Lussac, 
Humboldt, Ampere, Lamarck, Geoffroy. This was his security, these his coad- 
jutors, this the audience which Cuvier, the Saxon, and therefore the Protestant, 
habitually addressed. It was whilst conversing with him one day in his library, 
which opened into the Museum of Comparative Anatomy, a museum which he 
formed, that the full value of his position forced itself upon me. This was, I 
think, during the winter of 1821 or '22. A memoir had been discussed a day 
or two before at the Academy : I remarked to him that the views advocated in 
that memoir could not fail to be adopted by all unprejudiced men (hommes suns 
prejuges) in France. ' And how many men sans prejuges may there be in 
France V was his reply. 

" ' There must,' I said, 'be many, there must be thousands.' 

" 'Reduce the number to forty, and you will be nearer the truth,' was the 
remarkable observation of my illustrious friend. 

I mused and thought." — (R. Knox, M. D., F. R. S. E., Great Artists and Great 
Anatomists, London, 12mo. 1852, pp. 18-19. 

No. 16.— BULGARIAN. 

["Famille Bulgare:" — Gajmard (Commission Scientifique du Nord), Toy. au Spitaburg, Laponte, 
4c, (1838-40) ; Atlas Pittor., 66"=. liv."| 

See excellent "Portraits-types Turcs et Grees de la Roume'lie," with others 
of Circassians, Kurds, &c, in Hommaire de Hell ( Voyage en Turquie et en 
Perse, Paris, 1854, Atlas fol., Pis. viii., liii., xlviii. : and, for everything else 
here needful, D'Ohsson Tableau general de V Empire Ottoman, Paris, fol., 1790- 
1820; II, pp. 136-7; Plates 63-74.) 

No. 17.-GREEK. 

[" Palicar [guerilla], lies de PArehipel. Grec:— Galerk Royale de Costumes, Aubert k C' e ., Paris, 

fol., PI. 8.] 

On this face, M. Pulszky comments, in a private letter to me, that this man 
is a Sclavonian. I agree with him ; but such is the normal type of Moreots at 
the present day. 

No. 18.— CAUCASIAN. 

[" Prince Kasbek (Oss6ti§) :"— Gagarine, Costumes du Caucase, Paris, fol. 3852.] 

I mean, as the highest type of the " Men of Mt. Caucasus" (supra, Chap. V 
note 460). I have no space to enlarge upon this mountain's multiform inha- 
bitants. 

40 



G26 EXPLANATIONS OP THE TABLEAU. 

No. 19. — SYRIAN. 

[" Habitant de Bethleem (Palestine) :"— Galerie Royale de Costumes, PI. 2.] 
A most characteristical type of people I know well. 

No. 20.— ARAB. 

[" Azerai Arab, near CosseyT :" — by Prisse d'Avennes, in Jtfadden's Oriental Album, London, fol., 
. 1846, PI. 8.] 

" Voila les Arabes-Bedouins. * * * * We have enlarged somewhat in detail 
on this race, because, in the midst of this hybrid population of Syria, — of this 
confused mixture of Greeks, Jews, Turks, Barbaresques, Armenians, Franks, 
[i. e. Europeans'], Maronites, Drnzes, and Moghrabees — it is the only people 
that oifers a special and homogeneous character, the only one whose ethno- 
graphy can be attached to primitive traditions, and to the history of the first 
ages " (Taylor & Reybadd, La Syrie, VEgypte, la Palestine, et la Judee, Paris, 
fol. 1839, i. p. 125.) 

Ho. 21. — FELLAH. 

\Inediled — modern Egyptian peasant: — Prisse d'Avennes's portfolio, Paris, 1855.] 

Compare the ancient and the modern type, as before exhibited [supra, Plates 
I, II) ; and commented on by Pulszky (Chapter II), and by myself in "Prefa- 
tory Remarks." 

No. 22. — BERBER. 

[" Troupes d' Abd-el-Kader :" — Galerie Royale de Obstumes, PI. 1-] 

Compare Cuvier, Atlas, Mammiferes : — Bort de St. Vincent, Anthropologic 
de VAfrique Francaise (Mag. de Zool., Paris, 1845), PI. 60, No. II. See, also, 
my Chapter V, pp. 527-43. 

No. 29. — UZBEK-TATAR. 

[" SjaJi mierza, geweezen Cancellier in Golconda:" — from M. Pnlszky's collection of forty-seven 
East-Indian portraits, by native artists ; with Dutch MS. catalogue, " Namen der Perzoonen 
wien Conterfytsels in dit boekje Staan met aannyzing htinnen qualiteyteh," No. 35.] 

No. 24.— AFFGHAN. 

["A de Cabul -"—Galerie Royale de Costumes, PI. 6.] 

Types of Mankind, pp. 118-24 ; and against the latest Affghano-Jewish 
theories of Rose and of Forster,— besides noting the colored portraits of 
Douraunees in Mountstuart Elphinstone's Cabul — set the following affirma- 
tions from Kennedy. The Affghans, "originally a Turkish or Moghul nation, 
but that at present they are a mixed race, consisting of the inhabitants of 
Ghaur, the Turkish tribe of Khilji [swords?], and the Perso-Indian tribes 
dwelling between the eastern branches of the Hindu Kush and the upper parts 
of the Indus." (Op. cit., p. 6, — supra, V, note 515; citing Leech, in Proceed. 
Geog. Soc. of Bombay, 1838.) 



IV. 

AFRICAN REALM. 

(Nos. 19, 20, 21, 23, 24.) 

If "polyglotta" was so felicitously applied to the Asiatic world by Klaproth, and 
equally-well since [supra, Chapter I, p. 61.] to the African by Koelle, in regard to the 
languages spoken over more than half the terrestrial superficies of our globe, another 



EXPLANATIONS OF THK TABLEAU. 627 

designation, — that of "multicolor" — might, with propriety, be given to the human abori- 
gines of that African continent, wherein, betwixt the Tropic of Cancer and that of Capri- 
corn, the human skin possesses more shades and hues — totally independent of any imagined 
climatologic influences — than in any given area within the rest of this earth. To the evi- 
dences of this fact (new to general readers, who fancy that a woolly-headed "negro" must 
necessarily be black) accumulated, for southern Africa in Prichard's last volume, and for 
western in a pamphlet before cited (supra, Chap. Ill, p. 224; Chap.V,p.551), — whilst in the 
Parisian galerie anthropologique abundant colored casts, paintings, and photographs, illus- 
trate all three regions — the magnificent plastic collection of M. de Froberville (supra p. 608) 
will, when published, furnish for eastern Africa singularly unanticipated corroborations. 
On the Mozambique coasts alone, amid the nations grouped together, by this minutely- 
accurate observer, under the designation " Ostro-Negro" — amid whom the Mkuas are the 
most polychrome — nature's palette has supplied pigments of such innumerable tints that, 
only sixty colored casts have yielded 4 distinct nigritian types, subdivided into about 31 
" varie'te's." In our Ethnographic Tableau, Nos. 27 and 28 represent two of these tints; 
and in our Monkey-chart, figs. F, C, and D, indicate three more. 



REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 
No. 25. — ABABDEE. 

["Abd-el-Amid elrAbbadi — 40 ans^des montagnes a. 3 lieues de Coss&yr :" Lefebvre, Voyage en 
Abyssinia (1839^10), Paris, Atlas fol., 3.] 

Knowing these people through long years of observation, I chose this as an 
admirable representation of their normal type ; which the reader can contrast 
with an equally good Bisharree — as the next austral gradation along the Nile, 
eastern desert (Types of Mankind, p. 203, fig. 120). See Valentia ( Voy. 
and Travels, India, &c, London, 4to, 1802-6, II, p. 289) for another good 
profile of a Bisharree — drawn by my boyhood's friend and manhood's admi- 
ration, the late Consul-General Henry Salt. 

No. 26. — SAHARA-NEGRO. 

[" Type Ethiopien (Negre) :" — Bort de St. Vincent, Anthropologic de PAfriqw Francaise, Magaain 
de Zoologie, 4c, Oct. 1845 ; Mammiferes, PI. 6, No. Ill ; p. 13.] 

Compare (supra, Chapter V, wood-cut B), front-view of the same head; to- 
gether with the profile of the Gorilla, same page, wood-cut C. 

No. 27.— YEB00-NEGRO. 

("Oclil-Fekout-Dt', natif de Yebou (Age d'environ 42 ans) :" — D'Avegac, Notice sur le Pays et le 
Peuple des YCbous (Memoires de la Society Ethnologique) ; Paris, Svo, 1839 ; Plate, and pp. 21- 
4, 45-6.] 

Colored to represent an ordinary negro ; but the true hue is said to be " un 
noir brun." 

See De Froberville, "sur la persistance des characteres typiques du 
negre" (Bulletin de Soc. de Elhnol. de Paris, 1847, pp. 256-7). 

No. 28. — MOZAMBIQUE-NEGRO. 

[" Negre de la CSte de Mozambique :" — copied in Brazil by Choris, op. cit., 1'* liv., PI. III.] 

Colored to represent one of the various shades of the M'koua nation, in the 
inedited collection of 60 plaster casts of Africans brought from Bourbon and 
Mauritius by M. de Froberville (Paris, 1855). Vide "Rapport sur les races 
negres de l'Afrique Orientale au sud de ]'e"quateur, observers par M. de Fro- 
berville;" Comptes rendus des seances de V ' Acadfmie des Sciences, XXX, 3 juin, 
1850; tirage a part, pp. 11-14: — also, "Analyse d'un Memoire de M. Eugeno 
de Froberville," in Bulletin de la Societe Ethnologique de Paris, ann^e 1846, I, 
pp. 89-99 : — and Bulletins de la Societe de Geographie. 



628 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

No. 29. — CAEFK. 

[" Umbambu (young Zulu in dancing costume) :" — Q. French Anqas, Kafirs Illustrated, London, 
fol., 1849.] 

For good descriptions — less tinctured with "Exeter Hall" philanthropy 
than current English reports — see Delgoeque [Voyage dans VAfrique Auslrale 
— " Cafres Amazoulous et Makatisses," Paris, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo) ; who has 
likewise exhibited these nations in their true light, in "Note sur lcs Cafres" 
[Bulletin Soc. de Ethnologique de Paris, 1847, pp. 132—48). 

Contrast Louis Alberti [Description physique et kislorique des Cafres, Am- 
sterdam, 8vo, 1811, p. 29), and Le Vaillaxt, [2d Voy. dans VInlerieur de 
VAfrique, Paris, 1783-5, II, PI. XXI, in, pp. 33-189), with Lichtenstein 
(Travels in South Africa, London, 4to, 1812), who overthrows Barrow's Sinico- 
Hottentot predilections, whilst substantiating, ad pugnandum, this last natu- 
ralist's deductions. Patterson's Narrative (London, 1789), Sparrman's Cap 
de Bonne Esperance (Paris, 1787), and Salt's Abyssinia (London, 1814) furnish 
ample materials for Polygenists. 

No. 30. — HOTTENTOT. 

[Portrait of a Hottentot, aged " 52 ana — costume naturel — a en 10 enfans" — exhibited at Paris, 
1854^5 ; photographed by M. L. Roossead — Galerie Anthropologique du Museum cTHistoire 
NatureUe : — vide infra, pp. 608], 

My friend, Mr. J. Barnard Davis, having shown me the two full-size colored 
casts of "Bushmen," male and female, in the Royal College of Surgeons, I am 
free to say that they differ as much from anything human I ever saw, as a pure 
Laconian greyhound does from a "pug." 

Colored from PI. 24 of Peron, Voy. et Decouv. aux Terres Australes 
(Baudin's). 

Excellent drawings, showing the gradations of feature in Hottentots, Kaffrs, 
Bosjesmans, Booshwanas, &c. in Daniell (Sketches representing the Native Tribes, 
Animals and Scenery of Southern Africa, London, 4to, 1 820) ; who, speaking of 
the female Hottentot, adds (p. 29) that, when young she is symmetrical, but 
"gradually degenerates into those deformities which are too well known to 
require a particular mention." 

No. I assert that these peculiarities — which incontestably prove the Hotten- 
tots to be a distinct " species" — are not only little known, but that the facts 
have been suppressed — and by Cuvier himself — in order not to alarm Monoge- 
nists! The subject (see Types of Mankind, p. 431, wood-cut 276) is not fitted 
for elucidation in a popular work like the present ; but the President of our 
Academy of Nat. Sciences, Mr. Ord, possesses the suppressed plates (which he 
has kindly shown me), and knows where the original colored drawings made at 
the Cape by Peron and Lestieur are preserved. [See Ord, " Memoir of 
Charles Alex. Lesueur," — Silliman's Journal, 2d series, 1849, VIII, pp. 204-5, 
210: — and take note that, of the plates beautifully engraved for the "Voyage 
aux Terres Australes," 4 (exhibiting the "Tablier" with amazing minuteness, 
and at all ages,) were suppressed, by Cuvier's order, in the 1st ed. 1816, and in 
the 2d, 1831 ; because the livr" of Mr. Ord's unique copy has 28 (1 with 2 
figures) ; whereas that published by Arthus Bertrand contains only 25 
plates.] A more disgraceful case of unscientific pandering to the " Unity of 
the human species" can nowhere be found. Polygenists will, notwithstanding, 
get at these truths some day ; and, in the interim, can gather an osteological 
difference between Hottentots and other "species" from Knox (Races, Philad. 
ed., 1850, pp. 152, 157) ; as well as read the comments of Viret (Hist. Nat. 
du Genre Humain, Paris, 1824, I, pp. 224, 244-53). 

It is to the injudicious observations of John Barrow (French translation by 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 629 

CastSra, Voyage en Chine, Paris, 1805, I, pp. 77-82, PI. IV, Atlas,) — and to his 
alone — that a notion has got abroad that the Chinese and the Hottentots re- 
semble each other! Pickering (Races, 4to, p. 219), forty years later, frankly 
states, "I am not sure that I have seen Hottentots of pure race." 



AMERICAN REALM. 
(Nos. 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.) 

To ourselves in America this being naturally the most interesting, we may devote to its 
consideration a few more paragraphs than space admitted for the others. 

"In fine, our own conclusion, long ago deduced from a patient examination of the facts 
thus briefly and inadequately stated, is, that the A merican race is essentially separate and 
peculiar, whether we regard it in its physical, its moral, or its intellectual relations. To us 
there are no direct or obvious links between the people of the old world and the new; for, even 
admitting the seeming analogies to which we have alluded, these are so few in number and 
evidently so casual as not to invalidate the main position ; and even should it be hereafter 
shown, that the arts, sciences, and religion of America can be traced to an exotic source, I 
maintain that the organic characters of the people themselves, through all their endless 
ramifications of tribes and nations, prove them to belong to one and the same race, and 
that this race is distinct- from all others" (Morton, Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal 
Race of America, Philadelphia, 8vo, 2d ed., 1844, pp. 35-6). 

The Spanish Conquistadores had long ago remarked that " he who has seen one tribe of 
Indians, has seen all:" but, it must be also remembered that Ulloa, who first uses this 
sentence, was speaking of Central and South American aborigines ; and not of the Northern, 
or Barbarous (as distinguished from Toltecan), races, — with whom he was wholly un- 
acquainted. 

" The half-clad Fuegian, shrinking from his dreary winter, has the same characteristic 
lineaments, though in an exaggerated degree, as the Indians of the tropical plains ; and 
these, again, resemble the tribes which inhabit the region west of the Rocky Mountains — 
those of the great Valley of the Mississippi, and those, again, which skirt the Eskimaux on 
the North. All possess alike the long, lank, black hair, the brown or cinnamon-colored 
skin, the heavy brow, the dull and sleepy eye, the full and compressed lips, and the salient, 
but dilated nose. . . . The same conformity of organization is not less obvious in the osteo- 
logical structure of these people, as seen in the square or rounded head, the flattened or 
vertical occiput, the large quadrangular orbits, and the low, receding forehead. . . . Mere 
exceptions to a general rule do not alter the peculiar physiognomy of the Indian, which is 
as undeviatingly characteristic as that of the Negro ; for whether we see him in the athletic 
Charib or the stunted Chayma, in the dark Californian or the fair Borroa, he is an Indian 
still, and cannot be mistaken for a being of any other race" (Mokton, Op. cit., pp. 4-5: — Types 
of Mankind, p. 439). 

While lately at Paris, my friend M. Maury favored me with the loan of a book, then 
just issued from the press of (Cberbuliez) Geneva, — by M. F. de Rougemont (Le peuple 
primitif, sa religion, son histoire el sa civilisation, 2 vols. 8vo, 1855). As learned as the works 
of Count de Gibelin, De Pauw, De Gotgnes, De Fouemont, Bailly, Warburton, or 
Dupois, it far surpasses that of Faber (Origin of Pagan Idolatry) in the immensity of its 
geographical range and the variety of its literary sources. Having been, in due course of 
time, reviewed by M. Maury himself (Athenmum Francois, 6 Octobre 1855), some passages 
of his article, bearing upon the literary character of our earliest post-Columbian authori- 
ties for American history, are here introduced. 



630 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

"M. Fre'de'ric de Rougemont accepts without hesitation the contents of the Old Testa- 
ment; avoiding to distinguish between the moral and religious part, and the purely his- 
torical and geographical part, — between the divine part and the human part. In his eyes, 
one and the same character of inspiration consecrates all the pages of the holy book; and 
the rdle of the critic reduces itself to that of a commentator. * * * 

"I shall not undertake to discuss the principles upon which M. de Rougemont scaffolds 
his edifice. I will restrict myself to consigning here one observation, viz : that, although 
Protestantism is the school of free inquiry, there exist in its bosom some persons who, in 
matters of biblical exegesis and criticism, show themselves much less liberal and less bold 
than the Catholics are themselves. Inasmuch as the Protestants feel the lack of an 
authority, and as that of a traditional dogmatic tuition is wanting to them, they cling with 
earnestness to a book which is the only authority to them remaining, "and they will not 
issue from a literal and narrow interpretation. This system greatly injures the advance- 
ment of a multitude of sciences, — such as ethnology, chronology, geology, &c. — that have 
need of liberty and independence. 

" In order to proceed in a method truly scientific, it is necessary to clear the table (/aire 
table rase) of everything which has no scientific value, and consequently of everything that 
is not conformable to reason. Sufficient is it to say, that the domain of faith and the 
domain of science are altogether distinct; nor can they be confounded without compro- 
mising the dignity and the role as well of the one as of the other. But, on the opposite 
hand, science, when she stands upon her own ground, cannot, without self-abnegation, 
admit that to be demonstrated and certain which is only so in respect to sentiment. The 
fault of M. de Rougemont is, to have constantly mingled the two methods ; no less than to 
have believed that he could, at one and the same time, satisfy purely-scientific opinions 
and religious convictions. 

" It has happened to the author of this book what had occurred to the first missionaries 
who went forth to preach the gospel among savages. Pre-occupied with the thought of 
re-finding, in the tales and gross imaginations of such septs, some remembrances of the 
pristine fatherland whence these believed themselves to have issued, the missionaries have 
modified, often unknowingly, often intentionally likewise, the recitals they had heard, in 
order to invest them with a more biblical color. They have transformed into serious and 
connected traditions that which was but the instantaneous and capricious creation of a 
savage poet inspired through their own discourses; and it is such stuff which they have 
presented to us as the seculary reminiscences of the savages whom they were evangelizing. 
Indeed, these infantile stories did not often ascend to an epoch more ancient than the 
missionaries from whom we receive them, — and already the influence of the ideas preached 
by them, of the facts by themselves taught to their catechumens, made itself felt within 
the very narrow circle of the conceptions of these tribes. In this manner, the apostles 
of Christ only retook, under another form, that which they themselves had sown ; and they 
registered, as ancient traditions, that which was naught but the fantastic envelope given to 
their own teaching. This is what has incontestably occurred, — notably on the discovery 
of Amerioa, and more recently in the islands of the Indian Archipelago and of Polynesia. 
It suffices to cast one's eye upon the first accounts that the Spaniards composed about the 
religion and the usages of the Indians, in order to convince oneself that the former con- 
stantly mixed up their own beliefs with the fables which they gathered here and there 
amongst the savages." 

After proving his positions — for Mexico, through D. Andres Gonzales Baecia, Fran- 
cisco Lopez de Gomara, Juan de Torquemada, Father Lafitau, Gaecilasso de la 
Vega, and D. Fernando d'Alva-Ixtitxochitl — for New Zealand, through Sie Geoeqe 
Geev, [Dunmore Lang], J. C. Polack, Diefenbach, and Mozeenhout — and for Peru, 
through the Jesuit Pedro Jose de Ariaga, subjected to the recent scalpel of T. G. Muller 
[Geschichte der Amerikanischen JJrreligionen) — M. Maury glances over the ultra-biblical 
notions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Hindostan ; and lastly touches upon the traditions 
of the Hebrews : 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 631 

"That which comes against the suppositions of our author is, — the very trifling 
development which the dogma of a future state, and of demons, had taken among the 
Israelites ; whereas we see it serving as a basis to the great polytheistic religions of 
antiquity. If the biblical tradition had been the foundation of pagan beliefs, how comes 
it that that which was to itself the most foreign should have played amid them the prin- 
cipal part ? And, on the other hand, one would be compelled to recognize that these 
heathen nations have been more faithful depositaries of the primitive gospel than the 
elect-people itself, — because Christianity has adopted those dogmatical data which the 
Greeks and the Egyptians knew a great deal better than the Hebrews. Our author really 
feels the difficulty; and it is in vain that he tries to parry the objection accruing from 
it against his system. 

" There is, however, one point upon which I will not combat M. de Eougemont, and 
which will give me an occasion to conclude this polemic — perhaps a little too prolonged 

— with a treaty of peace. The Swiss writer respects in all religions their dignity, and 
that which may be called, up to a certain point, their truth. They are, indeed, the ones 
as well as the others, the expression of the gratitude of man towards his Creator, towards 
Nature, whose benefits sustain his existence. They constitute the more or less naive 
shape which thought puts on whilst meditating upon our destinies; and, as such, they 
have the right to be seriously studied ; as such, they must find place in the history of that 
which is the noblest of our being. Beneath those errors, — natural fruits of credulity and 
fear — that encircle human belief, there lives a profound and instinctive sentiment which is 
bound up with all our good instincts, whensoever it be suitably directed and restrained : 

— this sentiment is that of the soul feeling its weakness, which has need of the support 
of the mysterious Being whence it proceeds. This sentiment consoles and strengthens : 
it is the refuge of the honest man, and the motive-power of the most sublime sacrifices. 
Science, far from combating it, bows before it. She accepts it as a fact as evident as the 
most evident of physical and historical facts. M. de Rougemont feels these truths with 
more force than any man, because it is the excess of this sentiment that leads him astray. 
He wishes, like the ancient Gnostics, to behold but the rays of which the luminous portion 
becomes enfeebled in the ratio that they remove themselves farther from the Divine focus 
whence they emanate ; but, whatever may be said about it, matter has also had its part to 
play in these creeds and these superstitions, — and the majority were born upon a soil that had 
not been warmed by the gentle light with which he is illumined." 

Finally, those who may care about knowing what is now, in France and Germany, the 
scientific stand-point as concerns such words as "Creation," "Deluge," "Ark," and other 
Semitico-Christian traditions, have merely to turn over the leaves, for about 80 instances, 
sub vocibus, of Didot's Encyclopedic Moderne, last edition. 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 

No. 31. — KUTCHIN-INDIAN. 

[" Kulcha-Kutchin warrior (Loucheux- Indians of Mackenzie) :" — Richardson, Arctic Searching 
Expedition (1848-50), London, 1851 ; I, p. 381.] 

For instinctive hatreds between the indigenous Indian races and the Arctic 
Eskimo, compare Hearne (Northern Ocean, London, 1769-72, Chap. VI), 
Hooper (Tuski, pp. 272-5), and Richardson (Op. cit., I, pp. 377-402). 

No. 32. — STONE-INDIAN. 

IStone-lndian (near Cumberland House:" — Franklin, Toy. to Polar Sea, London, 1823, p. 104.1 

" The 'Tinne" [as the Eskimos term the Indians], or Chippewyans = Indians, 
stretch across the continent of America, meeting the Eskimos on the east, and 
the Kutchin on the west of the Rocky mountains (Richardson, op. cit., II, pp. 
1-59). No two types are more distinct than American Indians and the Arctic 
men. 



632 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

No. 33. — OTTOE-INDIAN. 

["Wali-ro-nee-sah, the Surrounder, an Ottoe-chief:" — Pkichabd, Nat. Hist, of Han, 1855; II, p. 
547 (from Catlin), PI. LIU. 

No. 34. — YUCATAN- INDIAN. 

[" Indien Contrebandier de l'Interieur :" — Waldeck, Voyage PUtor. ei Archeol. dans la Province 
de Yucatan (Amerique Cenlrale), 1834-6; Paris, fol. 1S37; PI. V.] 

Unfortunately, the plates in Richard Schomburgk (Reisen in British Guiana, 
Leipzig, fol. 1835; I, p. 429; II, p. 42) are uncolored; whilst " Essetamaissu 
Wapisiana" is Europeanized. There are, however, excellent descriptions of 
the colors, &c, in Kobt. H. Schomburgk's beautiful work [Twelve Views in 
British Guiana, fol., 1841, pp. 30-1). 

No. 35. — BOEOUA-INDIAN. 

[Debret, Voyage PUlor. au Bresil, Paris, fol., 1835 ; PI. 29, fig. 8.] 

Colored from descriptions in De Castelnau — (Expedition dans les parties 
centrales de V Amerique du Sud, Paris, 1843-51, "Vues et Scenes," pp. 6-14), 
compared with a tint obtained at the Galerie Anthropologique. Morton called 
them "the fair Borroa." 

Von Schwege (Brasilien die Neue Welt, Brunswick, 8vo, 1830, pp. 215-44), 
D'Orbignt (Amerique meridionale, Paris, 1846; Atlas, Plates 1-13), Prince 
Max. of Wied-Neuwied (Travels in Brazil, London, fol. 1820, pp. 311-12, pi. 
xvii, on " Botocudos"), Debret (Bresil, Paris, fol., 1835, II, pp. 2 seqq.), 
Aug. de St. Hilaire (Rio de Janeiro et de Minos Geraes, Paris, 8vo, 1830, I, 
pp. 424-6; II, pp. 48-231) — not to mention my friend M. Ferdinand de St. 
Denis, Librarian of the " Bibliotheque de St. Genevieve," who has critically 
summed up the whole of these authorities in his various publications — may, 
perhaps, arrest the attention of some reader, before he voluntarily concedes 
that monogenistic views on human "species" are things yet scientifically esta- 
blished. 

No. 36. — FUEGIAN. 

[" Tapoo Tekeenica — Pecheray-marj :" — Fitzroy, Surveying Voy. of " Adventure" and "Beagle'" 
(1826-39); London, 1829, n, p. 141. 

Colored from descriptions in Idem; and in D'Orbigny's "L'Homme Ame>i- 
cain." 



VI. 

POLYNESIAN REALM. 
(Nos. 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.) 

"Oce'anie," in Dumont d'Urville's ethnic map (Voyage dela Corvette VAslrolahe, 1826-9; 
Paris, folio Atlas, 1833: — 8vo Text, II, pp. 610-30), is luminously depicted in four colors, 
viz : Malaisie in blue, Micronesie, in green, ilelanesie in yellow, and Polynesie in pink. 

Only the three last named subdivisions comprehend the human faunae of our "Polynesian" 
Realm. 

What their respective contrasts are, is, in our Tableau, inadequately illustrated in one 
line of portraits. What the greatest of modern circumnavigator's opinions were, on the 
types of mankind so thoroughly studied by himself, may be gathered from three paragraphs. 

"It is now-a-days almost averred that the Alfourous of Timor, of Ceram and Bourou ; 
the Negritos del monte, or Aetas, of Mindanao; the Indios of the Philippines; the Ygolotes 
of Luzon ; the Negrillos of Borneo ; the blacks of Formosa, of the Andamans, of Sumatra, 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 633 

of Malacca, and those of Cochin-Chiua, called Hoys or Kemoys, — appertain to this same 
primitive race of Melanesians [black-islanders] who must have been the first occupiers of 
Oceania. 

" We do not hesitate to believe that the Polynesians arrived from the west and even 
from Asia [an ' opinion'] ; but we do not at all believe that they are the descendants of the 
present Hindoos. They had probably a common origin with them ; but the two nations 
had been already separated for a long time, when one of them went to people Oceania. 

" The same holds good as regards the consequences which different voyagers have drawn 
from the relations observed between the Polynesians and the Malays. Without any doubt, 
these two nations had of yore some intercourse. Lengthened studies have caused us to 
discover about 60 words which are evidently common between the two tongues; and that 
is sufficient to attest some ancient communications. But, there is too much difference in 
the physiological ' rapports ' for one to be able to suppose that Polynesians could be 
merely a Malayan colony." 



REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 

No. 37. — NEW ZEALANDER. 

[" Touri, chef de la Nouvelle Zelande :" — Doperret, Yoy. autour du Monde, " Coquille " (1822-5) . 
Paris, 1826, folio Atlas, No. 47.] 

It should be remembered that the contracted skin, in tatooed New Zealand 
faces, proceeds from the cicatrices accruing from such process. 

No. 38. — SAMOA-ISLANDER. 

['• Man of the Samoan Islands :" — Prichard, op. ctt., II, PI. XXvm, p. 451.] 

Erskine [Cruise, II. M. S. Savannah, London, 8vo, 1853) gives the most 
recent and the best accounts of the commingling of diiferent blood in the west- 
ern Pacific; since those of Quoy and Gaimakd (Zoologie, "Astrolabe," 1830, I, 
pp. 15-57), and of Lesson and Garnot (Zoologie, "Coquille," Paris, 1826, I, 
pp. 8-116). 

No. 39. — TIKOPIA-ISLANDER. 

[" Naturel de Ticopia :" — D'Urvllle, Toy. " Astrolabe," PI. 177 ; V, pp. 109-14]. 

Colored from Idem, PI. 185. 

See Nott's Chapter IV (supra, note 29) for the fact that these fair Islanders 
of the true Maori race cannot acclimate themselves on an adjacent island of 
the same Archipelago, whereon the aboriginal Blacks flourish. 

No. 40. — VANIKORO-ISLANDER. 

[" Mainglw de Manovg :" — D' Urville, op. cit., PI. 176, T, p. 155]. 

On this island, in 1788, were wrecked two French frigates, and, amidst these 
people, with all the gallant Frenchmen, perished La Peuouse — whose immortal 
name ennobles this archipelago. The accounts of Captain Dillon, and of 
Dumont d'Urville — who himself, after braving unharmed the perils of the sea in 
three voyages round the world, was burnt up in a rail-car at Meudon, together 
with his wife and son — furnish all particulars. 

No. 41. — TANA-ISLANDER. 

[" Man of Tana, New Hebrides :" — Erskine, Cruise, <fc. in Western Pacific (1849), H. H. S. " Ha- 
vannah;" London, 1S53; PI. Ill, p. 325.] 

For an admirable "Tableau synoptique des principales variations de taille 
dans les races humaines," which includes all these islanders as well as other 
types of man, consult Isid. Geoff. St. Hilaire (Anomalies de V organisation, 
Paris, 8vo, 1832, I, p. 235). 



634 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

No. 42. — VITI-ISLANDER. 

[" Habitant de Havre-Carteret, avec sa peinture de c6r6monie :" — D' Urville, op. cit., PI. 99, IV, p. 
446.] 

Colored from Idem, PI. 100. All these islanders bedaub their faces, and 
stain their hair with red and yellow ochres. 



VII. 

MALAYAN [otherwise " East-Indian "] REALM. 
(Nos. 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48.) 

Raffles, Marsden, Crawfprd, Looan: — these four names constitute, among the latest, 
our most reliable authorities. 

The most advanced ground of their researches has been already covered by M. Maury's 
Chapter I. 

Not having yet received Mr. Crawfurd's last work (1856), I must present the reader with 
this gentleman's views (in History of the Indian Archipelago, Edinburgh, 8vo, 1820; I, pp. 
13-28) ; after remarking, that European first acquaintance with the Malay race commenced 
simultaneously with that of the American, viz : only at the close of the XVth century. 

"The first of these [facts] refers to an original and innate distinction of the habitants 
into two separate races. In the Indian Archipelago there are — an aboriginal fair or brown 
complexioned race,— and an aboriginal negro race ; and, the southern promontory of Africa 
excepted, it is the only country of the globe which exhibits this singular phenomenon. * * * 

" No country has produced a great or civilized race, but a country which, by its fertility, 
is capable of yielding a supply of farinaceous grain of the first quality. * * x Their boats 
and canoes are, to the Indian Islanders, what the camel, the horse, and the ox, are to the 
wandering Arab and the Tartar ; and the sea is to them what the steppes and the deserts are 
to the latter. * * * 

" The savages of New Guinea, surrounded at this day by the most splendid, beautiful, 
and rare objects of animal and vegetable nature, live naked and uncultivated. Civilization 
originated in the west, where are situated the countries capable of producing corn. Man 
there is most improved ; and his improvement decreases, in a geographical ratio, as we go 
eastward, until, at New Guinea, we find the whole inhabitants an undistinguished race of 
savages. * * * 

" There are two aboriginal races of human beings inhabiting the Indian Islands, as dif- 
ferent from each other as both are from all the rest of their species. * * * One of these 
races may be generally described as a brown-complexioned people, with lank hair ; and the 
other as a black, or rather sooty-coloured race, with woolly or frizzled hair. * * * The brown 
and the negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to present, in their physical and 
moral character, a complete parallel with the White and the Negro races of the western 
world. The first have always displayed as eminent a relative superiority over the second, 
as the race of white men has done over the negroes of the west. All the indigenous civili- 
zation of the Archipelago has sprung from them ; and the negro race is constantly found in 
the savage state. * * * In some of the Spice islands their extirpation is matter of his- 
tory. * * * The brown colored tribes agree so remarkably in appearance themselves, that 
one general description will suffice for all. * * * The standard of perfection in color is 
virgin-gold ; and as the European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness 
of snow, the East-Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious 
metal. * * * The complexion is scarcely ever clear, and a blush is hardly at any time 
discernible. * * * 

"The Papua, or woolly-haired race, of the Indian islands is a dwarf African negro. A 
full-grown male brought from the mountains of Queda * * * proved to be no more than 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 635 

4 feet 9 inches high. * * * The skin, instead of being jet black, as in the African, is of a 
sooty colour. * * * The East-Insular negro is a distinct variety of the human species, and 
evidently a very inferior one. * * * They have in no instance risen above the most abject 
condition. Whenever they are encountered by the fairer races, they are hunted down like 
the wild animals of the forest, and driven to the mountains or fastnesses, incapable of 
resistance. * * * 

"The question of the first origin of both the negro and brown-complexioned races, 
appears to me to be one far beyond the compass of human reason. By very superficial 
observers, the one has been supposed a colony from Africa, and the other an emigration 
from Tartary. Either hypothesis is too absurd to bear the slightest examination. Not to 
say that each race is radically distinct from the stock from which it is imagined to have 
proceeded ; the physical state of the globe, the nature of man, all we know of his history, 
must be overturned to render these violent suppositions possible." 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 
No. 43. —MALAY. 

[" Native of Solor :" — Griffith's Cuvier, Animal Kingdom, London , 1S27 ; I, Plate, p. 186.] 

See original, with some variation of hue, in Peron, Voy. mix Terres Auslralet, 
(1800-4); 2d ed. ; corrected by De Freycinet, Atlas Hist,, PI. V, "sold at 
d'Infant<jrie Malaise." 

My brother William, who (with my brother Henry) has transferred his resi- 
dence from the vicinity of Memphis on the Nile, to Memphis on the Mississippi, 
resided four years in the Indian Archipelago, where his knowledge of Arabic, 
familiarity with Mussulmans, and clear ethnological perceptions, enabled him 
readily to acquire Malay. He writes me the following on these portraits : 
" Your Malay I consider to be the offspring of a Kling (low-caste man of Madras) 
and a Malay woman. The Mintird (No. 46) looks more like a Malay. Inter- 
course between a Kling and a Malayan woman is not uncommon." 

No. 44. — JAVANESE. 

["Singo-Sekar:" — Tan Pehs, Oosl-lndische Tvpen; Holland, folio, 1864; 5 afiering.] 

See Raffles (Hist of Java, London, 4to, 1817,- — Plates, frontispiece & I, p. 
92 — -also, p. 59) for the fact that, inasmuch as high-caste Malayo-Javanese 
complexion is "a virgin-gold color," this "Singo-Sekar" must be low-caste. 

No. 45. — MARIANNE-ISLANDER. 

[" Claudio-Lajo (Indien de race pure)," at Guam :— De Fkeycinet, Voy. " l'Uranie ;" Paris, 1825, PI. 
61, No. 2.] 

No. 46 — HINDOO. 

[" Chaan- Channa, Veldheen van Yidzjapour :"— portrait by native artist (ubi supra, Chap. II, figs 
93-6), in the Pulszkt collection, Dutch catalogue, No. 21 : — enlarged, like the preceding one, 
to match the other heads in this Tableau.] 
Compare for characteristic Hindoos the Hon. Miss Eden's Portraits of the 

Princes and People of India, London, fol., 1844. Although uncolored, there are 

none so good. 

No. 47. — MINTIRA. 

["Man of the Mintira tribe" (from Gugong Eermun, who lately settled at Rumbiah near 
Malacca: — Logan, " Physical characteristics of the Mintira" — Journal of the Indian Archi- 
pelago, I, No. V, Nov., 1847; pp. 294-5; and Supplement, Deo. 1S47; pp. 328-35, Plate p. 307, 
2d fig.] 

Colored by descriptions in No. V, pp. 247-8, 251 ; but no special reference, 
strange to say, being made to individual coloration in these critical papers, it is 
as well to compare Vol. II, May, 1848, pp. 245-8, &c. ; with Hamilton Smith, 
op. cil. pp. 224-8. As a memento of the changes which some of these islanders 



636 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 

are now undergoing, I may quote from Logan: "Unlike the Mantawe and 
Niha [described elsewhere], the Maruwi — at least those of Baniak — have lost 
most of the proper Niha-Polynesian habits, and adopted those of the Achinese 
and Malays" (Journal of the Indian Archipelago, Singapore, I, new series, No. 
1, 1856, pp. 8-10). 

Ho. 48. — NEGRILLO. 

[" A Papuan or negro of the Indian Islands :" — Crawford, Hist, of the Indian Archipelago, 
Edinb., 1S20; I, PI. 1.] 

Compare Pickering (Races, 4to, pp. 170-4, and PI. VIII) for good descriptions 
of these varied and most inferior races. 

Leaving aside the romance of P. de la Gironiere ( Vingl annees aux Philip- 
pines, Paris, 12mo, 1853), the best accounts of these "Negritos, Indiens, Tagales, 
Bisayas, Igorotes, Bariks, Itapanes, Tinguianes, Guinaanes, Yfugaos, Gaddanes, 
Calauas, Apayaos, Ibilaos, Bongotes, Isinayes," are in Mallat (Les Philippines, 
Paris, 8vo, & Atlas fol., 1846); who, moreover, furnishes abundant examples 
of hybridily in its most extraordinary combinations. Above a million of the abo- 
riginal Negritos are extant at the islands of Luzon and Mindanao alone. 



VIII. 

AUSTRALIAN REALM. 
(Nos. 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56.) 

Among the more recent authorities consulted — aside from the voyages of Cook, followed 
by the whole series of French circumnavigators — such as Flinders, Angas, Montgomery 
Martin, De Strzelecki, Leichhardt, Mitchell, Beete Jukes, &c. ; it is from Macgillivrat, 
nevertheless ( Voyage of H. M. S. Rattlesnake, London, 8vo. 1852, II, pp. 1-3), that one 
derives a fact really important enough, — always supposing the reader to possess some 
knowledge of the zoological amid other anomalies of that uuaccountable continent — to be 
here recalled. This fact, observed by a very competent witness, is, that " The junction 
between the two races, the Papuan from the north, and the Australian from the south, is 
effected at Cape York by the Kowraregas, whom I believe to be a Papuan colony of Austra- 
lians." Here the fusion of these two distinct types, through amalgamation and at their 
only point of contact, is complete. Five distinct native tribes are blended, in the neighbor- 
hood of this Cape, more or less into a race of hybrids, — those further back on the mainland 
being pure Australians, and those across Torres Strait on the islands being pure Papauas ; 
the characteristics pf both types becoming contrasted by comparing Nos. 41, 42, with Nos. 
49, 50, 51. No accounts pretending to identify the now perhaps extinct Tasmanians (Nos. 53, 
54) with either; or to suppose communication ever existed between the helpless savages of 
New South Wales and those of Van Diemen's Land ; we thus discern at a glance that 
Papuans, Australians, and Tasmanians, are animals as distinct as the various " species " of 
kangaroos found upon the same continent and island. 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 
No. 49. — NORTH AUSTRALIAN. 

[ ;t Nemare (Sauvage des environs de la riviere Nepean), Nouvelle Hollander" — De Freycinet, 
Toy. et Biamv. aux Torres Australes, "l'Uranie" (lSOO^t); PI. 100, fig. 3.] 

No. 50. —'WEST AUSTRALIAN. 

[" Ourou Mare", Habitant de la Nouvelle Hollande :" — Ctjvier, Eigne Animal, Mammiferes, PI. 8, 
fig. I : — the original (also uncolored) is in Pehon, op. cit. 

Colored from Pickering, Races, V. S. Explor. Exped., IX, 1848; PI. V, pp. 

137-8. Compare Hamilton Smith, op. cit., PI. 17, & p. 460. 



EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU. 637 

No. 51. — SOUTH AUSTRALIAN. 

[" MiUitie, a man of the Battara tribe beyond Port Lincoln :" — G. F. Angas, South Australia Illus- 
trated, London, fol., 181; PI. XVIII.] 

No. 52.— TASMANIAN. 

["Jemmy, Native of the Hamplin Hills :"— Strzelecej, Phys. Deser. of New SoutkWales and Van 
Piemen's Land, London, 8vo, lS15,p. 333.] 

Colored by descriptions. 
No. 53. — TASMANIANS, Man and Woman. 

["Indigenes des deux sexes (Tan Diemen):" — DTJrvtlle, op. cit. "Astrolabe," PI. 153; V, p. 191] 
Colored from original in Pekon, op. cit. Compare Cuviek, Mammiferes, 
and the Atlas du Voy. a la recherche de la Pe'rouse, Nos. 7, 8. See other 
examples in Captain Cook's Voyages, equally disagreeable. 

In the parallel line of out Tableau is a skull from the Mortonian collection 
upon which Dr. Meigs has enlarged (Chapter III, Fig. 78). I was with the late 
Dr. Morton when he received this specimen, and saw him note in his MS. 
Catalogue (Hid ed., 1849, No. 1327), that this "skull is the nearest approach 
to the orang type that I have seen." 

More than 20 years previously, Dumont d'UnviLLE ("Astrolabe," 182G-9, 
—I, p. 403) thus describes, on the spot, the hideousness of these, now all but 
extinct, types of mankind: — "Plusieurs ont les machoires tres-proeminentes, 
et l'un d'eux, nomme le vieux Wirang, eut fort bien pu passer pour un Orang- 
outang." 

I believe that our ETHNOGRAPHIC TABLEAU establishes what 
Baron de Humboldt has so eloquently deprecated — and Count de 
Gobineau so strongly insists upon — viz.: the existence of superior 
and inferior races. 

In these last two specimens of Nature's handicraft upon Prof. 
Owen's "sole representative of his [man's] order," we have reached 
the lowest. 

But, inasmuch as within the "Australian Realm," amidst other 
zoological anomalies, the Orang-utan has never existed, I proceed, 
in my final section, to examine where some of the highest simix 
and some inferior types of the "genus homo" may happen to find 
themselves in geographical contact. 



638 EXPLANATIONS OF M N K E Y-C H A R T . 



section n. 

ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE SIHIJE IN RELATION TO 
THAT OF SOME INFERIOR TYPES OF MEN. 

(With a Map containing 54 Monkeys, and 6 human portraits.) 

" The monkeys are entirely tropical. But here again we notice a very 
intimate adaptation of their types to the particular continents ; as the mon- 
keys of tropical America constitute a family altogether distinct from the 
monkeys of the old world, there being not one species of any of the genera 
of Quadrumana, so numerous on this continent, found either in Asia or Africa. 
The monkeys of the Old World, again, constitute a natural family by them- 
selves, extending equally over Africa and Asia ; and there is even a close 
representative analogy between those of different parts of these two conti- 
nents — the orangs of Africa, the Chimpanzee and Gorilla, corresponding to 
the red orang of Sumatra and Borneo, and the smaller long-armed species of 
continental Asia. And what is not a little remarkable, is the fact that the 
black orang occurs upon that continent which is inhabited by the black 
human race, while the brown orang inhabits those parts of Asia over which 
the chocolate-colored Malays have been developed." (Agassiz.) 598 

I first read the above paragraph at Portland, Maine, — where 
chance threw me in the way of Prof. Agassiz, within a week or two 
after its publication. 

Time passed away. I was then occupied with other pursuits ; 
until, in March 1853, another, to myself most welcome, chance 
again cast us together as fellow-travellers by car and steam-boat from 
Atlanta, Ga., to Mobile, Ala.; — the Professor to deliver a course 
of Lectures at the latter city, — myself to continue, at our 599 " ritiro" 
over that bay, those studies which resulted in the issue, one year 
afterwards, of the precursory volume to the present. 

Distance, and my own avocations, precluded my enjoying the 
advantage of listening to more than three of those six discourses 
which will, for a long time, render the Professor's name a " house- 
hold word" among Mobilians; but, I made it a point to attend the 
last; inasmuch as Prof. Agassiz had kindly forewarned Dr. Nott 
and myself, that this lecture was to be " for you." Pencil and note- 
book in hand, I went prepared to take down some memoranda for 
individual reminiscence : but, very few minutes elapsing before, en- 
tranced, so to say, by his easy flow of language and swiftness of 
black-board demonstration, whilst uncoiling a chain of facts, in 
Natural Histoiy, such as no other man can link together through an 

598 Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1850: — Types of Mankind, p. 75. 
539 Capt. Howard's — Daphne, Mobile Bay — where Mrs. Gliddon, our little boy and my- 
self, enjoyed for many months a most delightful residence. 



EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY- CHART. 639 

equal number of English words, — what I heard became photographed 
upon the leaves of memory instead of being scribbled simultaneously 
upon paper; and, next day, I re-crossed the bay, .... to muse. 
This was ou the 13th April, 1853. 

On the 14th idem, some gifted penman (unknown to me even by 
name, although known to Dr. Nott) published " The Lecture of 
Agassiz" 600 in a form, — as to mere verbal utterance condensed, but 
as to accuracy of fact so extraordinary (even to a " lecturer" blase like 
myself) — that I feel it to be no injustice to Prof. Agassiz to subjoin 
a citation, just as if the "reporter's" phraseology had been literally 
his own : — 

" My own views on this subject differ widely from those of others, who have before main- 
tained an original diversity of races. In my opinion not only did different races, or types 
of mankind, as the five races, so called, have a distinct origin, — but each distinct nationality, 
which has played an important part in history, had a separate origin. Men were created 
in nations.™ 1 * * * If there was such a community of origin among men, why had each 
region peculiar animals, — why did they not transmit the same domestic animals which they 
had already subdued ? On the contrary, these animals are as distinct as the races among 
whom they were found. * * * If then we compare the physical facts in respect to the 
different races — giving each its proper value — if we consider that in the earliest, times, 
different languages were in simultaneous use — as unlike as the notes of different species of 
animals ; if we regard the subject of hybridity in all its bearings, allowing the dissimi- 
larity of species in animals in different localities its proper weight, we shall be drawn 
inevitably towards the conclusion of a diversity of origin and separate centres of creation. 
* * * Diversity has marks and evidence of plan and gradation among races as among 
animals. "We find an original physical type distinguishing the races, at the same time 
showing a community from the lowest to the highest. 

" There is no such resemblance between the ape and man. Animality and humanity are 
entirely distinct. While, then, there are traits of resemblance between the colored races 
and these animals, they never could have arisen from apes. But we see in the races a 
gradation parallel to the gradations of animals up to man. Vet the colored races, though 
separated from animals entirely, in many traits resemble them more than they do the 
highest types of man. The inferior races, by successive gradations, are linked to a higher 
humanity. How could climatic influences produce these results? How could all physical 
causes combined ? It would be to make an accident produce a logical result ; in short, an 
absurdity. 

" In the whole world of life we find this gradation. It is not alone in the animal kingdom 
as it now exists, but in the antecedent ages, as far back as the oldest fossils, we see the same 
distinct order and gradation ; and we find evidence that, in those early ages, a plan was 
already laid out : we find the first expression of the same thought developed in the succes- 
sive structures of all animals and plants." 

The next enlargement (known to me) of this fundamental idea 
occurs in Prof. Agassiz's "Provinces of the Animal World." 603 

"The East Indian realm is now very well known zoologically, thanks to the efforts of 
English and Dutch naturalists ; and may be subdivided into three fauna;, that of Dukhun, 

«» Mobile Daily Tribune, April 14, 1853. 

601 Types of Mankind, pp. 74, 82. 

602 Op. cit., p. lxxi-ii. 



640 EXPLANATIONS OF HON KEY- CHART. 

that of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and that of the Sunda Islands, Borneo, and the Philip- 
pines. Its characteristic animals, represented in the seventh column of our Tableau, may 
be readily contrasted with those of Africa. There is, however, one feature in this realm 
which requires particular attention, and has a high importance with reference to the study 
of the races of men. "We find here upon Borneo (an island not so extensive as Spain) one 
of the best known of those anthropoid monkeys, the orang-outan ; and with him as well as 
upon the adjacent islands of Java and Sumatra, and along the coasts of the two East Indian 
peninsula, not less than ten other different species of Hylobates, the long-armed monkeys, 
— a genus which, next to the orang and chimpanzee, ranks nearest to man. One of these 
species is circumscribed within the island of Java, two along the coast of Coromandel, three 
upon that of Malacca, and four upon Borneo. Also, eleven of the highest organized beings 
which have performed their part in the plan of the creation within tracts of land inferior 
in extent to the range of any of the historical nations of men! In accordance with this 
fact, we find three distinct races within the boundaries of the East Indian realm: the 
Telingan race in anterior India, the Malays in posterior India and upon the islands, upon 
which the Negrillos occur with them. Such combinations justify fully a comparison of the 
geographical range covered by distinct European nations with the narrow limits occupied 
upon earth by the orangs, the chimpanzees, and the gorillas ; and though I still hesitate to 
assign to each an independent origin (perhaps rather from the difficulty of divesting myself 
of the opinions universally received, than from any intrinsic evidence), I must, in presence 
of these facts, insist at least upon the probability of such an independence of origin of all 
nations ; or, at least, of the independent origin of a primitive stock for each, with which 
at some future period migrating or conquering tribes have more or less completely amal- 
gamated, as in the case of mixed nationalities." 

It may well be supposed that repeated assertions like the above, 
proceeding from such an authority, stimulated the curiosity, to say 
the least, of an archeologue towards their verification. 

As in the discovery of Lake Moeris by my old friend and colleague 
Linant-Bey, 603 this leading idea continued to float in my mind — " sans 
pouvoir m'arreter a une conception satisfaisaute, lorsqu'enfin une 
circonstance presque fortuite determina en moi avec precision une 
pensee qui s'y agitait depuis long-temps d'une maniere confuse." 

This circumstance was my departure hence for Europe, in October, 
1854, with the view of collecting materials for the present volume. 
I reasoned with myself that, if such be the facts in zoological organ- 
ism, the "proper study of mankind" will have to be commenced da 
capo. "With no hostile intent, but with a sort of constitutional 
impulse to eradicate error, — as Bacon says, "the traveller cuts down 
a bramble in passing" — I have subjected Prof. Agassiz's theory to 
an archaeologist's experimentum crucis. 

He will be the first to acknowledge that the earliest notice he had 
of any such intention on my part, was the reception, at Cambridge, 
last October (1856), of a lithographic and uncolored proof of the 
annexed "Monkey-chart," — which, together with those of some 

603 Memoire sur le Lac Maris, prSsente et lu a la Sociele Egyptienne [founded at Cairo, 1886, 
by himself, Alfred S. Walne, James Trail, Peter Taylor, and myself] ; Alexandrie, 4to, 
1843, p. 18 




s 






A U S 




21 



/At 



/Sfl 



CHART ILLUSTRATIVE OFTHE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF M Dt . IN THEIR RELATION TO THAT OF SOME INFERIOR TYPES Of MEN. 




EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY-CHART. 641 

otters of our plates, and a prospectus of this volume, I had the 
pleasure of enclosing to him. 

On the 15th of the same month, during a brief interview in his 
library, Prof. Agassiz pointed out to me two errors in this chart, viz. : 
first (since corrected), that I had placed the habitat of the chimpanzee 
(E"o. 3) too far to the south in Africa ; and second (which I have not 
altered), that, in America, the black line of circumvallation inclosing 
all the species "simiae" is carried too much towards the north. 

Notwithstanding the enormous pressure of his engagements, — 
increased as they are by the production of a work, as honorable to 
his science as unexampled in the annals of our common republic for 
the popular support it so deservedly receives — Prof. Agassiz was so 
complaisant as to say : " If I have time, I will send you a letter upon 
this subject." Well, — time or no time — that letter came, to the 
extreme gratification of Dr. ISTott and myself; and the reader has 
already found it in our " Prefatory Remarks" {supra, pp. 13-15). 
Everything that follows hereinafter rests exclusively upon my indi- 
vidual responsibility. 



DESCRIPTION OF MONKEY-CHART — NOTES AND REFERENCES. 

The map itself lias been drawn to the convenient scale of my friend Dr. Bottom's admi- 
rable Carte physique el meleorologique du Globe Terrestre. mi The black line, surrounding 
all those regions where monkeys are found, has been traced chiefly in accordance with the 
geographical distribution of Schmarda, 605 — compared with that of Berghaus, 606 of Keith 
Johnston, 60 ' of Petermann, 608 of Humboldt, 609 and of another anonymous geographer. 610 

Of the 54 figures of the monkeys themselves, 41 have been borrowed from the plate of 
J. Achille Compte; 611 and the remaining 13 copied, at our Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia, by my wife, — to whom the tinted original given as pattern to the colorist 
is also due. The reference to each figure indicates the source whence such colors were de- 
rived. Independently of these works, and those cited previously (supra, Chap. V,pp. 459-65), 

6M 3me edition, chez Andriveau-Goujon, Paris, 1855. 

605 tlbersichlskarte der geographischen Verbreilung der Thiere, Wien, 8vo, 1853, vol. iii. 

606 Physikalischer Atlas, " Geographie der Thiere," Band II, PI. 1; Text, pp. 137-8; 
Gotha, 1848. 

607 Physical Atlas, "Geographical division and distribution of the Simicc and Prosimice;" 
and D 3, pp. 2-8, Edinburgh, fol., 1848. 

608 Atlas of Physical Geography, "Zoological map, Mammifers," PI. 11, London, 4to, 
1852. 

609 Bromme's "Atlas zu A. v. Humboldt's Kosmos," — Geographischen Verbreilung der 
vorziiglicheren Saugthiere auf der Erde, Stuttgart, 1851, PI. 32. 

^"Zoological map showing the distribution of Animals over the World, London, Reynolds, 
1854. 

611 Regne animal de M. le Baron Cuvier dispose en Tableaux mcthodiques, Paris, fol., 1832. 

41 



642 



EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY-CHART. 



D'Obbigny, 612 Hughes, 613 and especially Schinz. 614 have been consulted. And here I may 
remark that, while all these invaluable books adorn the library of our Academy, I have 
gratefully enjoyed, in common with others, the benefit of Dr. Thos. B. Wilson's munificence 
towards this home of the Natural Sciences. 

I proceed to catalogue the series exhibited on our " Monkey-chart;" after indicating to 
the reader that, as each figure is accompanied by its number, all that is necessary, in order 
to find its centre of creation in geographical distribution, is to look at the corresponding 
number on the map itself. 



SIM1M ORBIS ANTIQTJI, C AT ARRHIN.2E. 



No. 1. — Troglodytes Gorilla. 

[Rousseau et Deveria. Photographie ZooJogique, 
Paris, Mus. d'Hist. Nat., 1854, PI. XIII — 
" individu aduite envoye du Gabon par M. le 
Dr. Franquet, 1852 :" — colored by directions 
in Gervais, I, p. 28.] 

2. — Troglodytes niger, 

[Lesson, Jllitstrations de Zoologie, PI. 32.] 

3. — Simia Satyrns. 

[Chentj, PI. 4, "pose naturelle:" colored by 
Wagner, PI. I.] 

4. — Hylobates syndactylus, 
[P. Coveer, Mammiftres, PI. III.] 

5. — Hylobates albimanus. 
[Audebert, Singes, I, PI. 2.] 

6. — Hylobates Hoolock. 

[Chenu, Pig. 52, pp. 63-4 : — Jardine, Nat. Lib. 
PI. 3.] 

7. — Hylobates Leuciscus. 
[Schreber, Saugtliiere, Tab. Ill, B.] 

8. — Hylobates funereus. 

[Waqner, p. 18 : — Archiv. du Mus., V, p. 532, 
Tab. 2(5.] 

9. — -Hylobates agilis. 
[Gervais, p. 54: — Jardine, pp. 109-14, PI. 5.] 

10. — Colobus Guereza. 
TRUppei, WerUthiere, II, Tab. 1.] 

11. — Colobus polycomos. 
[Schreber, X, D.] 

12. — Semnopitheeus Entellus. 
[Audebert, Singes, PI. IT.] 



No. 13. — Cercopithecus ruber. 
[Schreber, XVI, B.] 

14. — Cercopithecus Faiums. 
[Schreber, XII.] 

15. — Cercopithecus pygerythrus. 
[Cuvier, Mammiferes, " Vervet."] 

16. — Cercopithecus Mona. 
[Audebert, IV, 2, rig. 7.] 

17. — Cercopithecus cephus. 
[Audebert, IV, 2, fig. 12.] 

18- — Cercopithecus nictitans. 
[Audebert, IV, 1, fig. 2.] 

19. — Semnopitheeus comatus. 
[Schbeber, XXIV, A.] 

20. — Macacus aureus. 

[Zoologie de la "Bonite," PI. 2.] 

21. — Macacus silenus. 
[Audebert, II, 1, fig. 3.] 

22. — Macacus nemestrinus. 
[F. Cuvier, Mam., XIII.] 

23. — Macacus Rhesus. 
[Audebert, II, 1, fig. ].] 

24. — Macacus Maimon. 

[F. Cuvier, Mam.} 

25. — Macacus eeandatus. 
[Audebert, I, 3, fig. 1.] 

26. — Cynocephalus sphinx. 
[Schreber, VI, or XIII, B.] 



612 Dktionnaire universelle d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 1847, "Quadrimanes," X, pp. 668-70. 

613 Storia Naturale delle Scimie e dei Maki disposta con ordine, Milano, fol., 1822. 

614 Systematischen Verzekhniz, &c, sive Synopsis Mammalium, Solothurn, 8vo, 1844, vol. i. 
passim. 



EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY-CHART. 



643 



No. 27. — Cynocephalus Hamadryas. 

[Schreber, X : — Gervais, V : — Chenu, fig. 143 : 
— Fischer, pp. 35-6 : — Wagner, p. 62: — De 
Blainville, OsUographie, p. 23.] 



No. 28- — Cynocephalus Mormon. 
[Jardine, PI. 17.] 

29. — Cynocephalus leucophseus. 
[Covier, Ann. du Mus., IX, Tab. 37.] 



SIMIiE OEBIS NOV.3I, PLAIYBHINJE. 



No. 30. — Mycetes ursinus. 

[AUDEBERT, V, 1, fig. 1.] 

31. — Cebus robustus. 

[Spix and Martins, PI. " Thierforruen des Trop- 
ischeti America," fig. 12 : — Jardine, PI. 21.] 

32. — Mycetus barbatus. 

[Spix, ibid., 17: — Wagner, Supplement, I, 
XXV, D.] 

33. — Ateles arachnoides. 
[Geoff., Ann. du Mus., XIII, PI. 9.] 

34. — Ateles Belzebuth. 
[Schreber, XXVI, B.] 

35. — Ateles Paniscus. 
[Jarddte, PL XX.] 

36. — Cebus Azara. 

[AUDEBERT, V, 2, fig. 1.] 

37. — Chrysothrix sciureus. 
[D'Orbigny, Voy., Mammif., PI. 4.] 

38. — Pithecia rufiventer. 
[Aubebert, VI, 1, fig. 1.] 

39. — Pithecia melanocephala. 

[Sfe, Sim., PI. VIII: — Geoff., Ann., XIX, p. 
117.] 

40. — Callithrix personatus. 
[Schreber, XXX a.] 

41. — Nyctipithecus trivirgatus. 
[Jardine, PI. XXIV.] 



42. — Hapale Jacchus. 

[Aodebert, VI, 2, fig. 4.] 

43. — Hapale penicillata. 
[Wagner, Suppl., XXXIII a.] 

44. — Callithrix lugens. 
[Jardine, XXIII.] 

45. — Hapale CEdipus. 
[Aodebert. VI, 2, fig. l.J 

46. — Chrysothrix nigrivittata. 
[Wagner, XI.] 

47. — Hapale rosalia. 
[Jardine, XXVIII.] 

48. — Lemur catta. 
[Aodebert, Maki, fig. 4.] 

49. — Lichanotus Indri. 
[Audebert, Indri, fig. 1.] 

50. — Stenops tardigradus. 
[Audebert, Loris, fig. 1.] 

51. — Galago senegalensis. 
[Schreber, XXXVIII, B.] 

52. — Tarsius spectrum. 
[Audebert, fig. 1.] 

53. — Inuus speciosus. 
[Wagner, Pi. V.] 

54. — Cercocebus sabaeus. 
[Jardine, PI. XIII.] 



But, that the above 54 specimens comprehend but a very small 
portion of the varied "species" of Monkeys already known, is made 
evident through the following table from Wagner: — 6l5 

615 Die Sdugthiere in Abbildungen nack der Nalwr mil Beschreibung en von Dr. Johann Chris- 
tian D. von Schreber, Leipzig, -Ito, 1853, p. 3. 



644 



EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY CHART. 



Number of the kinds. 



Name of Order. 



Known 

in 

1S40. 



Simia , 

Hylobates 

Semnopithecus 

Colobus 

Cercopithecus 

Inuus 

Cynoeephalus 

Mycetes 

Lagothrix 

Ateles 

Cebus 

Pithecia 

Nyctipithecus 

Callithrix 

Chrysothrix .'. 

Hapale 

Lichanotus 

Habrocebus 

Lemur 

Galeocebus 

Ckirogaleus 

Stenops 

Microcebus 

Perodicticus 

Otolicnus 

Tarsias 

Sum. 



7 
14 

7 
16 
11 

7 

2 



2 
6 
1 
6 
1 
15 
1 



128 210 



Classi- 
fied in 
1852. 



Classi- 
fied since 
1840. 



25 

5 

32 

10 

10 

7 

2 

9 

10 

7 

o 

11 

3 
26 
1 
2 
14 
1 
5 
3 
2 
1 
6 
1 



11 
2 
1 
1 



53 



Hence, then, including additions since 1852, we possess already 
more than 216 distinct animals of the monkey-tribe. These are 
thus classified, — after a lament regarding the difficulties of systems 
— by Gervais: — 616 

"This first tribe of the Mammifers will be partitioned, as follows, into five secondary 
groups: — 

1st. — The ANTHROPOMORPHS (Anthropomorpha), comprising the genera Troglodyte, 

Gorilla, Orang, and Gibbon. 
2d. — The SEMNOPITHECI (Semnopithecians), divide themselves into Nasio, Semngpi- 

theoi properly so called, Presbtte, and Colobus. 
3d. — The GUENONS ( Cercopilhecians), or the genera Miopithecus, and Cercopithecus. 
4th. — The MAC ACS (Macadam), who partition themselves into Magot, Mangabet, 

Maimon, and Macac. 
5th. — CYNOCEPHALI (Cynocephalians), or the Ctnopitheci, Mandrills, Papions, and 

Theropitheci. 
Of these five groups, the third alone is exclusively African : the four others, on the con- 
trary, have each particular genera in America and India." 

The reader's eye, following the black line of circumvallation on 
our " Chart," will perceive that, except at Gibraltar (whither De 
Blainville 617 considers the magot to be an importation), there are no 

K6 Trois Rignes de la Nature, Nammiferes, V° partie, Paris, 4to., 1854, p. 12. 
611 Osteographie, p. 21. But see Gervais, pp. 95-9. 



EXPLANATIONS OP MONKEY CHART. 645 

monkeys in Agassiz's European realm, — none in the Polynesian, nor 
any in the Australian. In the American, the Professor told me that 
no simiae are to be found northward of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. 
Prof. Spencer F. Baird, however, obligingly pointed out to me two 
passages which seem to leave the exact degree of latitude an open 
question. 618 

But the strangest puzzle of all is, how to explain the sharp line of 
demarcation beheld between island and island, in the Malayan 
realm ; which a great naturalist has forcibly embodied in the follow- 
ing language : — 619 

"The [East-Indian] Archipelago forms, as it were, a world apart, as much by its geo- 
graphical position, as by its relation to ethnography and natural history. Situate betwixt 
the Indian continent and Australia, the natural productions of this maritime world resemble, 
for the greater part, those of the limitrophie lands ; and it is there only where the transition 
pronounces itself the most distinctly, where one observes a small number of peculiar beings. 
This line of transition is marked by the islands of Celebes, Flores, Timor, and Boeroe. It 
finds itself, consequently, between the 1 3 5th and 145th of east longitude of the meridian of 
Ferro. At the Moluccas, all nature already wears an Australasiatic (Papou) character ; 
because, beyond some chiroptera which stretch as far as New Guinea, and the genus of 
hogs, all the mammifera originating in that country belong to the order of the marsupials 
[every other animal having been imported]. * * * * In general, the botanical and zoolo- 
gical character of Australia commences at Celebes and at Timor ; so that these two islands 
may be considered as the limits of two Faunas altogether distinct. * * * * The Indian 
Archipelago divides itself, therefore, in the direction of west to east, as concerns geography 
and natural history, into two parts of unequal extension. The occidental part, which is 
the largest, contains the islands of Borneo, Sumbawa, Java, Sumatra, and the peninsula of 
Malacca ; whereas the oriental portion contains but the islands of an inferior order, — those 
of Celebes, Flores, Timor, Gilolo, and, to take the widest range, perhaps even to Mindanao." 

Muller then goes on to explain how those larger portions that are 
nearest to the Hindostanic continent resemble, in their Faunae, the 
southern parts of India, — -just as Maury {supra, Chapter I.) has shown 
it to be the case with mankind. He counts about 175 mammifera 
throughout the entire archipelago, Malacca and ISTew Guinea inclu- 
sive ; of whicb scarcely thirty belong exclusively to the eastern side, 
where, chiroptera inclusive, there are but fifty species in all. 

In this singular arrangement of nature within so small an area, 
and amid islands so very proximate, the Orangs, the Gibbons, indeed 
all true Simiae, appertain solely to the western side ; and are totally 

sis « xhe Monkeys which enter into the southern provinces of Mexico belong to the genera 
mycetes and hapale" (Richardson, "Report on N. Amer. Zool." — Brit. Assoc, adv. Science, 
V. 1837, p. 138): and " apes in the southern provinces of Mexico" (Wagner, Bayerischen 
Akade'mie, Miinchen, 1846, p. 51.) 

« 19 Salomon Muller, " Cosmographie, Zoologie compared," — Siebold' 's Moniteur des Indes- 
Orienlales et Occidentales, Batavia, 4to., 1846-7, pp. 120-36. M. Muller, as member of the 
Commission of Physical Researches, spent in the Indian Archipelago " onze anne"es des plus 
belles de ma vie." 



646 EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY CHART. 

absent in the eastern : Celebes and Timor being tbe most easterly 
isles producing monkeys, and these only Macacos and Cynocephali. 
Hence, the anthropoid apes, highest of the series, are met with only 
where Telingan, Malay, and Negrillo races dwell: neither tbose, nor 
even the lower monkey-forms, being encountered amid the bomes of 
Papouas, Harfoorians, — far less of Australians. Now, what is essen- 
tially noteworthy, if depressions of temperature may explain why the 
natural limit of the monkey-range does not extend itself outside of 
our black line of circumvallation elsewhere, such explanation has no 
force here. Its cause is inherent in some other law of nature. 



HUMAN HEADS IN MONKEY CHART. 
(Figs. A, B, C, D, E, F.) 

Having sketched, in the preceding pages, the relative positions of 54 "species" of the 
simiadcc, out of some 216 known, amid the zone appointed for them by Nature ; I pass 
ouward in the endeavor to indicate to the reader, through six human heads, the sort of types 
co-resident with monkeys within the same geographical area. These six heads, however, 
can merely serve as mnemonics; because, had space permitted, and did we possess the por- 
traits of numberless races with which we are acquainted solely through descriptions, it 
would not have been a difficult matter to draw, on the same spot occupied by each quadru- 
mane, a bimane illustrative of singular correspondences ; and then the eye could have per- 
ceived that the colorations of the human skin, within this self-same zone, are almost as 
varied, and as diverse from each other, as the forms and colors of the monkey tribes are 
now therein seen to be different. This experiment may, in the future, be tried by others. 
In the meanwhile, the letters placed beneath serve to indicate the habitat of each of these 
six individuals, whose likenesses are very roughly traced. 

REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS. 

A. — AMERICAN. ' ' Puru-PuriV' nation. 

[Spis and Hartids, Seise in Brazilien: — colored by De Castelnad, AmhHqiie du Sud, "PI. XIX. 
CJdotat/. fameux chef de Cherentes qui a long temps desole' la province de Goyaz. * * * II etait 
anthropopbage."] 

To convince oneself of the untold varieties of these South American races, — 
see De Castelnait (passim) ; Augt. St. Hilaire (Rio de Janeiro, I, pp. 421-7 ; 

II, pp. 49-57, 137-231); D'Okbignt (Voy., Atlas); Debret ( Voy. Pittor. an 
PrSsil, fol., Paris, 1834, II, and plates) ; — especially Rugendas (Voy. Pittor. au 
Bresil, transl. Golberry, Paris, fol., 1833, II, "portraits et costumes," pp. 2-34) ; 
and Darwin, Wilson, and Fitzroy [Surveying Voyages of H. M. S. " Adventure" 
and "Eeagle" — London, 8vo, 1829 — II, pp. 129-82; appendix, pp. 135-49; 

III, pp. 519-33). 

B. — WEST AFRICAN. ' ' Negre de la cdte d' Or" — in Brazil. 

[CHORIS, op. cit., liv. 7™«, PI. VI : — colored by descriptions in RDGENDAS... 
See Chapter V, supra, pp. 545-6. 



EXPLANATIONS OF MONKEY CHART. 647 

C. — EAST AFRICAN. "Mozambique" negro, in Brazil. 

[Deuret, op. cit., II, PL 37 — " differentes nations negres," fig. 8 : — colored from his descriptions 
(pp. 114-15); as compared -with some of De Froberville's casts, and with Choris's accounts, liv. 
1", pi. Ill, 4c] 

Salt [Voyage to Abyssinia, London, 4to, 1814, pp. 33-41) spoke about the 
Monjou negroes on that coast as " of the ugliest description, having high cheek- 
bones, thick lips, small knots of woolly hair like peppercorns on their heads, 
and skins of a deep, shining black:" and again, that the Makooa, Makooana, 
•who are negroes, and not Kaffrs (an Arabic term, only meaning "infidel"), whilst 
possessing excessive deformity, and ferocity of visage and characters, did not 
possess any name for "God" except wherimb, meaning the "sky," — any more 
than did the Monjous themselves, among whom "molungo" signified both God 
and sky. Compare Types of Mankind, pp. 609-10. 

D. — SOUTH AFRICAN. " Hottentot Venus." 

[From a photograph by M. Rousseau — Gaterie Anthropologique, Paris — of her colored full-size cast 
in that Museum.] 

Compare her portraits in Cuvier's fol. Mammiflres ; and my remarks, supra. 
pp. 628-9. 

E. — MALAYAN. " Serebis Dyak." 

[Marrtatt, Borneo and the Indian Archipelago, London 8vo, 1848, PI. 79 : — tinted " copper-colored." 
op. cit., pp. 5, 78.] 

My brother William, long stationed at Sarawak (supra, p. 635), tells me that 
it is an excellent sample. 

F. — " BISAYA sauvage, ou des montagnes." 

[Mallat, Philippines, Atlas. 6 **] 

Compare the observations of Chamisso (in Von Kotzebtje's Voy. "Rurick," 
II, pp. 351-98) ; and of Lesson and Garnot (in Duperret, Voy. " CoquilK" 
Paris, 8vo., 1826; "Zoologie," I, pp. 8-106). 

620 The homines caudati have been already treated upon (supra, Chap. V, pp. 458-9 notes 
183-4). Mallat (Les Philippines, p. 129) neither believes in them, nor in the reported 
unions between human and anthropoid genera ; on which Blumenbach (De Generis Humam 
varietate, p. 16) indignantly wrote " Hybrida humana negantur," while Vjrey (Hist. Nalurellc 
du Genre Humain, 1824, III, p. 491, &c. &c.) denies that such experiment has been fairly 
tried. 

Had not an account of the " Onmg-Kubu," and of the "Orang-Gugur," been read before 
the American Geographical and Statistical Society of New York, and received the Society's 
"imprimatur" in pamphlet form (Report "on the East Indian Archipelago; and a descrip- 
tion of the Wild Races of men," New York, 1854), I should have as little dared to refer to 
Capt. Walter M. Gibson's most enchanting adventures (The Prison of Welteverden; and a 
glance at the East Indian Archipelago, New York, 1855, pp. 120-3, 180-2), as to have cited, 
on African questions, my friend Mr. Brantz Mayer's entertaining "Captain Canot." As 
it is, the responsibility of publication, in the former case, reposes entirely upon la critique 
of the honorable historians, divines, lawyers, doctors, and merchant-princes, who in council 
assembled to hear the Captain's eloquent address, on the 24th March, 1855, at the New 
York University. As I receive it, so I pass it on : with the mere remark that, the authentic 
descriptions science possesses of real men — -the Orang-benua, to wit — in Malayana, have, 
quite sufficiently for my anthropoid analogies, brought down humanity, in that Archipelago, 
to a grade not many removes from the rubescent Orang-utans ; so that, should Mr. P. T- 
Barnum ever be so lucky as to import for his Museum a live specimen of the genus " Oiang " 
(Malayice man), like that one figured by Capt. Gibson in wood-cut on page 180, I shall 
thankfully accept, — just as I should be equally glad to see one of M. d'ABBADiE's " Dokkos " 
(Prichard, Nat. Hist., p. 306) — such a wonderful "confirmation" (not to mention also 
sundry dwarf " Aztec children") par dessus le marcM. 



648 EXPLANATIONS OF M N K E T-C H A R T. 



FINAL OBSERVATIONS. 

Thus, I think, we have ascertained that, in Continental Asia, Africa 
and America, — leaving aside Madagascar — no less than amidst the 
thousand islands of the Indian Archipelago, there are scattered 
immense numbers, and many varieties, of Monkeys ; that, in some 
places, different "species" occupy contiguous habitats, whilst their 
specific analogues are only met with at very remote distances ; that, 
no two tracts of mountain or valley, hardly two islands, possess the 
same "species" of Monkey; in short, no spot within the Tropical 
zones, however circumscribed in area, which does not, if it has any 
at all, possess its own simia or simise; and, finally, that such " species" 
is rarely to be found anywhere else. This (if recollection serves) is 
the substance of what I learned from Prof. Agassiz's memorable 6th 
lecture, delivered at Mobile. 

Now, does any naturalist claim that each " species " of monkey 
was not created within the particular province, zone, focus, or centre, 
where we find it? "Will any naturalist hazard a denial that such 
monkeys were therein created, not in single pair, but in "nations" ? 
On ascending to Man, viewed as the " sole representative of his 
order," after taking the preceding survey of his more or less anthropo- 
morphous precursors, — whether in relative palseontological epochas, 
or in respective station at a given link of the spiral chain of beings — 
is it, I would inquire, by accident that the highest approximations to 
the human form dwell closely along the Equmoxial line, almost in 
antipodean juxtaposition, — viz., the red orang-utans, with black and 
brown gibbons, in Malayana, and the black gorillas and chimpanzees 
in Africa ? 

And, is it again through accident, I ask, that the converse of this 
proposition is true, viz : that the lowest forms of mankind in Africa, 
as well as the lowest forms of mankind in Malayana, vegetate, to 
this day, precisely where the highest, most anthropoid, types of the 
monkey "species" respectively reside? 

Others may believe in " accident." I do not, — where nature mani- 
fests to my reason such harmonies in the action of Creative Power. 

Still, notwithstanding my own belief in a CREATOR, there are 
such things — things which the brothers Humboldt suspected and 
rejected — as " myths, fiction, and pretended tradition." All animals, 
Man inclusive, are said to have spread themselves over this planet's 
superficies, during the last (2348-1857) 4205 years, dating from the 



EXPLANATIONS OF M N K E T-C II A R T. 649 

period when Noah's Ark grounded upon Mount Ararat, in Armenia, 
whose geographical position and altitude are well known. 621 

By way of archfeological experiment, under the generally accepted 
hypothesis that the parents of all these simise descended, peripateti- 
cally along that mountain, and genealogically from that " single pair," 
what species of monkey now extant is the one which is most likely 
to satisfy the conditions required ? 

Premising that such an unique couple 622 must have travelled down 
that mountain with amazing celerity, 623 in order to attain warmer 
latitudes, and in quest of food and a home, — it is only the Cyno- 
eephalus ITamadryas 62> that fulfils every necessary requirement. His 
present habitat — Arabia, and perhaps Persia — is the nearest in geo- 
graphical approximation to Mount Ararat; and we know that he 
lived thereabouts, near Mesopotamia, as far back as b. c. 885 ; because 
his effigy is sculptured on the Obelisk of Nirnrood, 625 assigned by 
Rawlinson to that date, under the reign of Jehu. 626 I propose, there- 
fore, that a male and female "pair" of the "species" Cynocephalus 
Ramadryas [No. 27] be henceforward recognized as the anthropoid 
analogues of "Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth ;" and that it must be 
from these two individuals that, owing to transplantation, together 
with the combined action of aliment and climate, the 54 monkeys 
represented on our chart have originated. It is, notwithstanding, 
sufficiently strange, that, under such circumstances, this "primordial 
organic type" of monkey should have so highly improved in G-uinea 
and in Malayana as to become Gorillas and Chimpanzees, Orangs and 
Gibbons; whereas, on the contrary, the descendants of "Adam and 
Eve" have, in the same localities, actually deteriorated into the most 
degraded and abject forms of humanity. 

62i See above, Chapter V, pp. 572-3. 

622 The Kopiiim, apes [supra, V, note 341], are not mentioned in Hebrew writings until 
the recent manipulation of Kings and Chronicles by the Esdraic school. Being always "un- 
clean " to the Israelites and Mussulmans, however dear to the Brahmans, monkeys must ' 
have been taken into the Ark "two and two" (Genesis, VII, 9); and not "by sevens" 
(ibid., verse 2). 

623 They are celebrated for their agility, and are the only " species " trained in the Levant 
for gymnastic and dancing exhibitions. 

624 Supra sub voce: — Ainsworth (Researches in Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldma, London, 
8vo, 1838, p. 37) observes, "The monkey, whose country begins about 38° N. lat., is un- 
known in Assyria and Babylonia; but it is not certain if it is not an extinct animal, for an 
able Hebrew scholar has stated to me, that the doleful creatures which are prophetically 
announced as tenanting fallen Babylon, ought to be read as monkeys or baboons." 

625 Latakd's folio Monuments, 1849; and his Nineveh and its Remains, 1848; contain 
accurate copies of this monument. For the archaeology of various monkeys, see De Blain- 
vtlle (Osteographie, pp. 28-49), and Gervais (op. cit., pp. 107-8). 

626 Types of Mankind, pp. 701-2. 



650 EXPLANATIONS OF THE TABLEAU". 

In bidding farewell to the reader, I would invite his attention to 
one more singularity, and to one now established fact, suggested by 
inspection of this Monkey-chart, viz : — 

1. That, within the black circumvallating line which surrounds the 
zone occupied by the simise, no "civilization" — except possibly in 
Central America and Peru — has ever been spontaneously developed 
since historical times. 

Europe, since the ages of fossil remains (supra, Chapter V, pp. 52-3 
-4), has not contained any monkeys, save a few apes imported from 
the African side to skip about Gibraltar rock. The line runs south 
of Carthage, Cyrene, Egypt-proper, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Ariana, 
and China. We know that Hindostanic "civilization" was due 
exclusively to immigrant Aryas ; and that of Malayana, primarily to 
the migratory sequences of the latter, and secondarily to the Muslim 
Arabs. 

2. That the most superior types of Monkeys are found to be 
indigenous exactly where we encounter races of some of the most 
inferior types of Men. 

G. R. G. 

Philadelphia, February, 1857. 



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L. E. Barnard, Esq., Akron, Ohio. 
Edward Barnett, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
Godfrey Barnsley, Esq., " (2 copies). 

Antonio Barrera, Esq., " 

Hon. John R. Bartlett, Providence, R. I. 

E. H. Barton, M. L\, New Orleans, La. 
Thos. P. Barton, Esq., Dutchess Co., N. Y. 
Thorney Bateman, Esq. (of Youlgrave), Bakewell, 

Derbyshire, Eng. 
A. Batre, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 
"William Battersby, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
Hon. James A. Bayard, Wilmington, Del. 
C. Beard, M. D., New Orleans, La. 
C. H. Becbc, M. D., Hancbettsville, Dane Co., Wis. 



Edmond Begouen. Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

R. Bein, M. D., New Orleans, La. 

S. Berg, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

P. G. Bertolet, M. D., Oley, Berks Co., Pa. 

Chauncey Bestor, Esq., Washington, D. C. 

Prof. Geo. W. L. Bickley, M. D., Cincinnati, 0. (3 c.) 

T. S. Bidgood & Co., Booksellers, Mobile. Ala. (10 c.) 

L. H. Bigord, Esq., Greenville, Darke Co., Ohio. 

Amos Binney, Esq., Boston, Mass. 

S. Birch, Esq., F. R. S., L., British Museum. 

William A. LI. Birkbeck, Esq., London. 

"W. R. Black, Esq., Fairmount Mills, Philadelphia. 

S. H. Blackwell, Esq., Dudley, Eng. 

C. Blauchard, Esq., New York (4 copies). 

Henry S. Boardman, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Gauldrie Boilleau, Sect'y French Legation, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 

B. Bollmann, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

His Imp. Highness Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte. 

James Bolton, M. D., Richmond, Ya. 

Samuel Miller Bond, Esq., Darien, Ga. 

Miss Eliza Bostock, London. 

*M. le Dr. Ch. Boudin, Med. en Chef de l'Hop. Milit. 
du Roule, Paris. 

M. Boullemet, Bookseller, Mobile, Ala. (10 copies.) 

A. O. Bourne, Esq., Providence, R. I. 
David Bowman, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

B. Boykin, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

R. D. Boykin, Esq., Portland, Dallas Co., Ala. 

Jno. M. Broomal, Esq., Chester, Pa. 

N. H. Brown, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Joseph Brummel, Esq., Richmond, Ya. 

Samuel D. Buck, Bookseller, Hopkiusville, Ky. (10) 

E. IT. Bugbee, Esq., Providence, R. I. 
E.Burdick, Esq., Madison, Wis. 

*Luke Burke, Esq., Ed. Ethnol. Journ., London. 

T. H. Burton, M. D., Richmond, Ya. 

Jno. M. Butler, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

H. L. Byrd, M. D., Savannah, Ga. 

Thomas Byrne, Esq., New Orleans. La. 

Lady Noel Byron, Brighton, Eng. 

William Cadow, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 
G. H. Calvert, Esq., Newport, R. I. 
T. W. Camm, Esq., Providence, R. I. 
The Canadian Institute, Toronto, C. W. 
Edwin Canter, M. D., New Orleans, La. 
G. W. Carpenter, Esq., Germantown, Pa. 
Carrington Library, Woonsocket, R. I. 

F. M. Cater, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 



6-27 n.B — Tliose gentlemen whose mimes are marked with an asterisk (") liuve materially furthered llie scientific i 
rests of this work. 



652 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 



Prof. A. H. Cenas, M. D., Univ. of La., New Orleans. 

Paul Chaudron, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Langdon Cheves, Jr., Esq., S. Ca. 

T. R. Chew, M. D-, New Orleans, La. 

George G. Child, Esq., Mobile, Ala, 

Samuel Choppin, M- D., New Orleans, La. 

S. W. Clanton, Esq., Warsaw. Sumter Co., Ala 

William R. Clapp, Esq., Trenton, N. J. 

Sir James Clark, Bart., M. D., F. R. S.. London. 

James M. Clarke, Esq., Providence. R. I. 

Major M. Lewis Clark, St. Louis, Mo. (2 copies.) 

Cleaves & Guion, Booksellers, Memphis, Tenn, (12.) 

Breckenridge Clemens, M. D., Easton, Pa. 

C. H.'Cleveland, M. D., Cincinnati, 0. 

J.B.Cobb & Co., Booksellers, Cleveland, 0. (5 copies.) 

Jerome Cochran, M. D., Memphis, Tenn. 

William Archer Cocke, Esq.. Richmond, Ta. 

J. I. Cohen, M. D., Baltimore, Md. 

Octavos Cohen, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Joshua 0. Colburn, Esq., Washington, D. C. 

T. K. Collins. Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

William James Colman, Esq.. London. 

Coltart & Son, Booksellers, Huntsville, Ala. (2 c.) 

Lady Coltman, London. 

Stephen Colwell, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Ceo. Combe, Esq., Edinburgh. 

Andrew Comstock, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Timothy Conrad, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Wilson C. Cooper, Esq., Scriven Co., Ga. 

William Gabriel Couves, Esq.. New Orleans, La. 

Joseph Cowen, Jr., Esq., Blaydon Burn, Newcastle- 
on-Tyne, Eng. 

J. Hamilton Cowper, Esq., Hopeton, Ga. 

H. Cowperthwait & Co. Booksellers, Philada., Pa. (5) 

Abram Cox, M. D., Kingston, Surrey, Eng. 

Mrs. Cox, Manningtree, Essex, Eng. 

Robert Cox, Esq., Edinburgh. 

James Coxe, M. D., Edinburgh. 

Fitzhugh Coyle, Esq.. Washington, D. C. 

J. Crawford. Esq., F.R. S., London. 

The R. H. the Lord Chancellor (Lord Cranworth) ; Eng. 

Jno. Crickard, Esq., New Orleans. La. 

S. B. Crocheron, M. D., Natchitoches, La. 

Richard Cull, Esq.. London. 

Sir Eardley Culling Eardley : Bart., London. 

A. J. Cummings, M. D., Roxhury, Mass. 
Roger Cuoliffe, Jr.. Esq., London. 

Charles P. Curtis, Esq., Boston, Mass. (2 copies.) 
Joseph Curtis, Esq., Orleans Hotel, Philadelphia, Pa. 
Hermann Curtius, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

Mrs. R. P. Dana, New York. 

S. D. Darbishire, Esq., Pendyfryn, Wales (4 copies). 

J. Barnard Davis, Esq., F. S. A., Shelton. Staff., Eng. 

B. Dawson, Bookseller, Montreal, C. W. (5 copies.) 
Amos Dean, Esq., for State Univ. of Iowa, Albany, 

New York. 
Col. J. S. Deas, Mobile, Ala. 
II. A. Deas, Esq., fi 
Z. C. Deas, Esq., " 
John De Lacy, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
George P. Delaplaine, Esq., Madison, Wis. 
A. Denny, M. D., Suggsville, Ala. 
Wm. Denton, Esq., Dayton, 0. 
Mons. J. Boucher de Perthes, Abbeville, France. 
- H. W. De Saussure, M. D., Charleston, S. C. 
Charles Desilver, Bookseller, Philadelphia, Pa. (6 c.) 
^Monsieur Th. Deveria, Musee du Louvre, Paris. 
D. M. Dewey, Bookseller, Rochester, N. Y. (2 copies.) 



Thos. Dexter, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Charles D. Dickey, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Prof. Samuel Henry Dickson, M.D., Charleston, S. C. 

Charles Edward Dirmeyer, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

Geo. W. Dirmeyer, M. D., " 

Hon. Nathan F. Dixon, Westerly, R. I. 

James Doherty, Esq., Staten Island, N. Y. 

Win. B. Donne. Esq., London Library (2 copies). 

J. Drysdale, Esq., M. D., Liverpool, Eng. 

Lieut. B. Du Barry, U.S.A., Fort Snelling, Minnesota, 

Miss Eliza Duckworth, Richmond Hill, Surrey, Eng. 

R. E. Dudgeon, Esq., M. D., London. 

Monsieur Benjamin Duprat, Paris. 

P. S. Duval, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Charles J. M. Eaton, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 

George N. Eaton, Esq., " 

Rollin Eaton, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Jonas Eberhardt, Esq., Schuylkill Falls, Pa. 

Wm. H. Egle, Esq., Harrisburg, Pa. 

Monsier Gustave D'Eichthal, Paris. 

The R. H. the Earl of Ellesmere, K.G., F.R. S., Eng. 

Albert T. Elliott, Esq., Providence, R. I. 

Smith Ely, Esq., New York. 

David F. Emery, Esq., Newburyport, Mass. 

Moses H. Emery, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

John Evans, Esq., Radnor, Delaware Co., Pa. 

Joseph Evans, Esq., Schuylkill Falls, Pa. 

Joshua Evans, Esq., Golden Hill, Hampstead, Eng. 

William Eynaud, Esq., Island of Malta. 

John Fagan, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

N. Fejervary, Esq., Davenport, Iowa. 

Sir Charles Fellows, F.R.S., London. 

John J. Field, M. D., London, 

Thos. R. Finlay, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

G. W. Fish, Esq., Oglethorpe, Ga. 

J. R. Fisher, Esq., Richmond. Ya. 

H. I. Fisk, M. D., Guilford, Conn. 

Jules A. Florat, Esq., New Orleans. La. 

Thos. M. Forman, Esq., Savannah, Ga, 

Prof. Caleb G. Forshey, Rutersville, Texas. 

Wm. Parker Foulke, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa, 

S. P. Fowler, Esq., Danvers Port, Mass. 

L. A. Frampton, M. D., Charleston, S. C. 

C. S. Francis & Co., Booksellers, New York (5 copies). 

Godfrey Freytag, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

G. L. Galbraith, Esq., London. 

John R. Gardner, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

Isidor Gerstenberg, Esq., London. 

The R. H. Thomas Milner Gibson, M. P., London. 

Thos. C. Gilmour. Esq., New Orleans, La. 

Charles Gilpin, Esq., London. 

Andrew Glassel, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Arthur W. Gliddon, Esq., Man. S. Austral. Bank, Port 

Adelaide, S. Australia (7 copies). 
Henry A. Gliddon, Esq., Fonseca, Honduras. 
John Gliddon, Esq., London. 
Miss C. J. Gliddon, France. 
Wm. A. Gliddon, Esq.. Memphis, Tenn. 
Le Comte A. de Gobineau, Teheran, Persia. 
S. H. Goetzel & Co., Booksellers, Mobile, Ala. (9 c.) 
Garland Goode, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 
F. C. Gordon, M. D., Mobile, Ala. 
*M. le Dr. L.-A. Gosse, Geneva, Switz. 
Miss Stirling Graham. Edinburgh. 
Wm. Grant, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
W. T. Grant, M.D., Wrightsboro, Columbia Co., Ga, 
John Graveley, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 



653 



J. Allen Green, M.D., Columbia, S. C. (2 copies.) 

Daniel H. Greene, Esq., East Greenwich, R. I. 

D, S. Greenbongh, Esq., Boston, Mass. 

W. W. Greenhough, Esq., " 

John Greenwood, Jr., Esq., New York. 

John Grigg, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa, 

Geo. Grote, Esq., London. 

J. H. Gurney, Esq., M.P., London. 

Lieut. A. W. Habersham, U.S.N., Navy Yard, Phila. 
Clamor Fred. Hagedorn, Esq., Consul Gen'l, Philadel- 
phia, Pa. 
R. K. Haight, Esq., New York (10 copies). 
Prof. S. S. Haldernan. A.M., Delaware College. 
Salmon C. Hall, Esq., "Washington, D. C. 
John Halsey, Esq., New York (3 copies). 
R. W. Hamilton, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
Reuben Hamilton, Esq., Liberty Hill, S. C. 
C. Hamlin, M. D., Natchitoches, La. 
Hon. J. H. Hammond, Charleston, S. C. 
Geo. S. Harding, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
Col. Jesse Hargrave, Sussex Co., Va, 
James Harran, Esq., Bladen Springs, Ala. 
Joseph Harrison, Esq., Philadelphia. 
R.JH. Harrison, M. D., Holly Springs, Miss. 
W. H. Harrison, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
Alexander Hart, M. D., New Orleaos, La. 
Charles Hart, Esq., Providence, R. I. 
Thos. "W. Hartley. Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
W. H. Haxall. Esq., Richmond, Va. 
Hayes & Zell, Booksellers, Philadelphia, Pa. (5 c.) 
Geo. Hayward, M. D., Boston, Mass. 
E. II. Hazard, Esq., Providence, R. I. 
Geo. G. Hazard, Esq., Warren, R. I. 
Rowland G. Hazard, Esq., Peacedale, R. I. 
Willis P. Hazard, Bookseller, Philadelphia, Pa. (5 c.) 
J. T. Heald, Bookseller, Wilmington, Del. (3 copies.) 
Charles H. Heath, Esq., Morristown, Lamoille Co., Vt. 
Julius Heissee, Esq., Mobile, Ala. (2 copies.) 
J. H. Helm, M. D.. Eaton, Preble Co., Ohio. 
Thomas Helm. Esq., Philadelphia. 
A. Henderson, Esq., Frederick, Md. 
C. G. Henderson & Co., Booksellers, Philada., Pa. (2.) 
Bernard Henry, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Wm. C. Henszey, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Joseph H. Herron, Bookseller, Newville, Pa. (3 c.) 

Alexander Herzen, Esq., London. 
John C. Heylman, Esq., Harrisburg, Pa. 

Sir Benjamin Heywood, Bart., Manchester, Eng. 

Benjamin Higgins, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

G. S. Hillard, Esq., Boston, Mass. 

Wm. B. Hodgson, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Professor van der Hoeven, Leyden, Holland. 

Prof. Jno. Edw. Holbrook, M. D., Charleston, S. C. 

Charles Holland, Esq., Pres't Liverpool Chamber of 
Commerce, Liverpool. 

J. F. Holland, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

F. Hollick, M.D., New York. 

0. W. Holmes, M. D., Boston, Mass. 

Philetus H. Holt, Esq., New York. 

Sidney Homer, Esq., Bostoo, Mass. 

J. J. Hooks, M.D., Memphis, Tenn. 

Hopkins. Bridgman & Co., Booksellers, Northampton, 
Mass. 

Thos. F. Hoppin, Esq., Providence, R. I. (2 copies.) 

Henry Horlbeck, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

Leonard Horner, Esq., F. R. S , London. 

Mrs. LaviniaE. A. Howard. Daphne, Mobile Bay (2.) 

S. S. Howell, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 



Leon Huchez, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

J. A. Huger, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

R. W. Hughes, Esq., Richmond, Va. 

Samuel I. Hull. Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

Thomas Hun, M. D., Albany, N. Y. 

Leigh Hunt, Esq., London. 

Prof. Thos. Hunt, M. D., Univ. of La., New Orleans, La. 

T. C. Hunt, Esq.. Natchitoches, La. 

Ariel Hunton. Esq., Hyde Park, Lamoille Co., Vt. 

A. H. Hutchinson, Esq., Bladen Springs, Ala. 

W. M. Hutton, Esq., Memphis, Tenn. 

W. Ivory, Esq., Edinburgh. 

Samuel Jackson, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Henry Jacobs, Esq., Providence, R. I. 

N. R. Jennings, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

Edward Johnson, Bookseller, Alexandria, La. (6 c.) 

F. Johnson, M.D., Natchitoches, La. 
Alexander Johnston, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 
^Monsieur Jomard, Pres. de la Soc. de Geog., Paris. 
George Jones, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Geo. N. Jones, M. D., Savannah, Gn. 

G. R. Jones, M. D., Memphis, Tenn. 

Prof. James Jones, M.D., Univ. of La., New Orleans. 
W. Jones, Esq., Riceboro, Ga. 

Henry K. Kalussowski, M. D., Washington, D.C. 
Robt. E. Kelly, Esq., Versailles, France (2 copies). 
L. C. Kennedy, Esq., Spartanburgh, S. C. 
James Kennedy, A.M., M.D., New York. 
Edward M. Kern, Esq., U. S. N. Pacific Explor. Exped., 

Washington, D.C. 
M. M. C. King, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
Hon. Judge Mitchell King, Charleston, S. C. 
Wm. F. Kintzing, Esq., Philadelphia. 
Stephen D. Kirk, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 
F. Klincksieck, Esq., Paris (2 copies). 
Charles Kochersperger, Esq., Philadelphia. 
P. M. Kollock, M.D., Savannah, Ga. 
Louis Kossuth, London. 

Miss Lace, Beaconsfield, Liverpool, Eng. 

Mrs. Laing, Edinburgh. 

Abbate Michelangelo Lanci, Prof. LL. 00., Rome. 

W. G. Langdon, Esq., Glasgow. 

F. Lanneau, Esq., Charleston, S. 0. 

The R. II. the Marquis of Lansdowne, K. G., F. R. S., 

Eng. (2 copies.) 
H. A. Lantz, Bookseller, Reading, Pa. (3 copies.) 
Henry Laurence, Esq., Yazoo City, Miss. 
Samuel Laurence, Esq., New York. 
Leavitt & Allen, Booksellers, New York (4 copies). 
Robt. Lebby, M.D., Charleston, S.C. 
Charles Le Cesne, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 
Victor Le Cesne, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 
John L. Le Conte, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
The R. Rev. the Lord Bishop of Manchester (Dr. Lee), 

Eng. 
Prof. Joseph Leidy, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
*Monsieur Lemercier, Biblioth. Mus. d'Hist. Nat., 

Paris. 
*Chevalier R. Lepsius, Berlin. 
J. P. Lesley, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Geo. H. Levis, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
J. C. Levy, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
S. Yates Levy, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
Elisha H. Lewie, M. D.. Philadelphia, Pa. 
Saunders Lewis, Esq., Montgomery Co., Pa. 



654 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 



Library of the Colonial Department, London. 

Library Company of Philadelphia. 

Library of the Society of Writers to H. M. Signet, 

Edinburgh. 
Lord Lindsay and Balcarres, Colinsburgh, Fifeshire, 

Scotland. 
Adolphus Lippe, M.D., Philadelphia. 
Livermore & Rudd, Booksellers, New York (3 copies). 
Kobt. S. Liviugston, Esq., New York. 
Edward Lloyd, Jr., Esq., Manchester, Eng. 
Charles A. Locke, Esq., Boston, Mass. 
Lord Londesborough, K. C. II., F. R. S., Eng. 
Andrew Low, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 
Henry A. Lowe, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 
Hermann E. Ludewig, Esq., New York. 
John Luff, Esq., New Orleans. 
J. L. Brown Lundin, M. D., Camp, Crimea. 
H. M. Lusher. Esq., Memphis, Tenn. 
Mrs. Lushington, London. 
Lt.-Col. Lyell, Hon. E. Ind. C. S., London. 
Sir Charles Lyell, F.R. S.. London. 

Wm. Mackay, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

*K. R. H. Mackenzie, Esq., F.S. A., M.R. A.S., Lond. 

Charles Maclaren, Esq., Edinburgh. 

Charles Magarge, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

James Magee, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

W. G. Malin, Esq., for Library of Penn Hosp., Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

Mrs. Mallet, Belmont, Hampstead, Eng. 

J. C Mausel, Esq., Blandford, Dorset, Eng. 

Wm. B. Mardre, Esq., Windsor, N. C. 

♦Monsieur A. Mariette, Conserv. Musfie du Louvre, 
Paris. 

J. H. Markland, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Francis Markoe, Esq., State Department, Washington, 
D. C. 

Wm. T. Marshall, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

F. Mars, M. D., Richmond, Va. 

Prof. L. Q. Mathews, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, 
Va. 

G. M. B. Maughs, M. D., Fulton, Mo. 
James Maury, Esq.. New Orleans, La, 
B. F. May, M.D., McKinley, Ala. 

H. R. May, Esq., Memphis, Tenn. 

Joseph Mayer, Esq., F. S. A., Liverpool, Eng. 

A. H. Mazyck, Jr., Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

Alex. McAndrew, Esq., New York. 

Wm. McCabe, Esq., Whitby, C. W. 

Hon. Judge Theo. H. McCaleh, New Orleans, La. 

J. H. B. McCIellan, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

J. H. McCullob, M.D., Baltimore, Md. 

R. R. McDonald, Esq., Memphis, Tenn. 

R. S. McDow, Esq., Liberty Hill, S. C. 

Thos. F. McDow, Esq., " 

McDowell & Co., Booksellers, Steubenville, (2 c.) 

A. M. Mclver, Esq., Riceboro, Ga. 

John McKee, Sr., Esq., Chester C. H., S. C. 

John McKee, Jr., Bookseller, Chester C. H.. S. C. (5) 

P. B. McKelvey, M.D., New Orleans, La. 

F. E. McKenzie, Esq.. Charleston, S. C. 

M. C. McKing, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Hon. Lewis McLane, Baltimore, Md. 

Middleton & McMaster, Booksellers, Mobile, Ala. (25) 

Sir John McNeil, G. C. B., F. R. S., Edinburgh. 

Colin McRea, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

James McSberry, Esq , Frederick, Md. 

Mercantile Library, Baltimore, Md. 



A. P. Merrill. M.D., Memphis, Tenn. 
Minor Merriwether, C. E., Memphis, Tenn. 
Prof. John Millington, Memphis, Tenn. 
Charles S. Mills, M.D., Richmond, Va. 
Clark Mills, Esq., Washington, D. C. 
Chas. Millspaugh, Esq., St. Louis, Mo. 

The Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. H. H. Milman), Eng. 

J. B. Mitchell, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

M. Monro, Esq., London. 

Jno. W. Moore, Bookseller, Philadelphia (2 copies). 

Thos. Moore, Esq., Schuylkill Falls, Pa. 

Thos. H. Morris, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 

Prof. W. B. Morrow, M.D., Memphis, Tenn. 

P. A. Morse, Esq., New Orleans. 

Robt. P. Morton, Esq., Germantown, Pa. 

Mrs. Samuel George Morton, Germantown, Pa. 

Thos. Geo. Morton, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Alex. Moseley, Esq., Richmond, Va. 

J. M. Moss & Bro., Booksellers, Philadelphia, Pa. (5) 

Prof. James Moultrie, M. D., Charleston, S. C. 

Wm. Mure, Esq., H.B.M. Consul, New Orleans. 

Dr. Max Miiller, Taylorian Professor, Oxford, Eng. 

Jennings Murphy, Esq., Mobile, Ala. (2 copies.) 

The H. Lord Murray, Edinburgh. 

G. A. Myers, Esq., Richmond, Va. 

W. II. Myers, Esq., Loudonville, 0. 

W. Nelson, Esq., Edinburgh. 
Alexander Nesbitt, Esq., London. 
J. West Nevins, Esq., New York. 
New Orleans Club, per R. H. Chilton, Esq., New Or- 
leans. 
J. P. Nichol, Esq., Prof, of Astronomy, Glasgow (2). 
Miss Nightingale, Embley, Hants, Eng. 

B. M. Norman, Bookseller, New Orleans, La. (10 c.) 
Edwin Norris, Esq., F.R.S., F.R.A.S-, London. 
Prof. Gustavus A. Nott, M. D., XJniv. of La., New Or- 
leans. 

Robert W. Ogden, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
Samuel Ogdin, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Jno. W. O'Neill, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Edward Padelford, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

W. B. Page, M. D., Philadelphia. 

I. II. & John Parke;-, Booksellers, Oxford, Eng. (3 c.) 

Parry & M'Millau, Booksellers, Philadelphia, Pa. (10) 

Edward Patterson, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 

Robert Patterson, Esq., U. S. Mint, Philadelphia. 

Geo. Pattison & Co., Booksellers, Memphis, Tenn, (5) 

Monsieur G. Pauthier, Paris. 

Abraham Payne, Esq., Providence, R. I. 

St. George Peachy, Esq., Richmond, Va. 

Miss Mary Pearsall, Germantown, Pa. 

Jno. Penington & Son, Booksellers, Philadelphia (5). 

Hanson Penn, M.D., Bladensburg, Md. 

Penn Mutual Insurance Co., Philadelphia. 

J. Pennington, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 

Hon. John Perkins, Jr., Ashwood, La. 

E. W. Perry, Esq., Richmond, Va. 

Thomas M. Peters, Esq., Moulton, Ala. 

R. E. Peterson, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

T. B. Peterson, Bookseller, Philadelphia, Pa. (10 c.) 

Gen. Rohles Pezuela, Mexican Minister, Washington, 

D. C. 
J. G. Phillimore, Esq., M. P., London. 
Hon. Henry M. Phillips, Philadelphia, Pa. 
James Phillips, Esq., Washington, D. C. 
Wm. W. L. Phillips, Esq., Trenton, N. J. 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 



655 



Phinney & Co., Booksellers, Buffalo, N. Y. (10 copies.) 

Martin Pickett, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Hon. Albert Pike, Little Rock, Ark. 

James Pilians, Esq., Prof, of Humanity, Edinburgh. 

John Pitman, M.D., Memphis, Tenn. 

J. N. Piatt, Esq., New York. 

George Poe, Esq., Georgetown, D. C. 

Geo. F. Pollard, M.D., Montgomery, Ala. 

M. Polock, Bookseller, Philadelphia, Pa. (2 copies.) 

William 0. Pond, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

James Potter, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Philip Poullain, Esq., Savannah, Geo. 

Thomas II. Powers, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

"William S. Price, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Providence Athenasum. Providence, R. I. 

Public Library, Boston, Mass. 

Isaac Pugh, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

G. P. Putman & Co., Publishers, New York (20 c.) 

John Raig, Esq.. Philadelphia, Pa. 

B. Howard Rand, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Randall & Williams, Booksellers, Mobile, Ala, (10 c.) 
Rev. Wm. Porter Ray. Lafayette, Ind. 

James B. Read, M. D., Savannah, Ga. 

J. Rehn, Esq.. Philadelphia, Pa. 

John K. Reid, Esq., New Orleans, La. 

A. R. Reinagle, Esq., Oxford, England. 

*Monsieur Ernest Renan, Biblioth. Imp., Paris. 

Wm. Rhett, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

A. Henry Rhind, Esq., Sibster, near Wick, N. B. 

R. C. Richardson, M. D., Natchitoches, La. 

Prof. John Leonard Riddell, M.D., Univ. of La., New 

Orleaus. 
Geo. W. Riggs, Esq., Washington, D. C. 
Rising Star Groupe, Greenville, 0. 
W. Lea Roberts, Esq., New York. 
F. M. Robertson, M. D., Charleston, S. C. 
Hon. Judge Jno. B. Robertson, New Orleans, La. (2) 
T. G. Robertson, Bookseller, Hagerstown, Md. (3 c.) 
H, Robinson, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

C. M. Robison, Esq., London. 

Thomas W. Robison, Esq., Kingston, C. W. 

Col. W. S. Rockwell, Milledgeville, Ga. 

Wm. B. Rodman, Esq., Washington, N. C. 

John Rodgers, Esq., U. S. N., Washington, D. C. 

George Rogers, Esq., M. D., Clifton, Bristol, Eng. 

Prof. Henry D. Rogers, Boston, Mass. 

Edward Romilly, Esq., Audit. Office, London. 

Howell Rose, Esq., Wetumpka, Ala. 

Andrew M. Ross. Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Dr. R. Roth, Prof, of Sanscrit, Canterbury, Eng. 

James Rush, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Mrs. James Rush, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Russell &. Jones, Booksellers, Charleston, S. C. (25 c.) 

J. Rutherford Russell, Esq., M. D., Leamington, Eng. 

(2 copies.) 
Charles Ryan, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
The R. H. Sir Edward Ryan, Kensington, Eng. (2 c.) 

Jose Salazar, Esq., Mexico. 

*Monsieur Aug. Salzmann, Paris. 

W. S. Sargenson, Esq., Pall Mall, London. 

B. F. Shaw, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Philip T. Schley, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Howard Schott, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Rudolph Schramm, Esq., London. 

Mrs. Salis Schwabe, Manchester, Eng. (2 copies.) 

H. W. Schwartz, Esq., New Orleans, La. 



Charles Scott, Esq., Trentoo, N. J. 

Thomas J. Scott, Esq., Montgomery, Ala. 

W. E. Screven, Esq., Riceboro, Ga. 

Alexander S. Semmes, M. D., Washington, D. C. 

Prof. George Sexton, M. P., Lambeth, Eng. 

Lemuel Shattuck, Esq., Boston, Mass. 

J. W. Shepherd, Esq., Montgomery, Ala. 

Charles Sherry, Jr., Esq., Bristol, R. I. 

Miss Lydia Shore, Meersbrook, near Sheffield, Eng. 

Nathl. B. Shurtleff, M. D-, Boston, Mass. 

E. H. Sievelling, Esq., M. D., London. 

Franc. Simenez, Esq., Mexico. 

W. Gilmore Simms, Esq., Woodlands, S. C. 

C. TT. Slater, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
John Slavens. Esq., Portland Mills, Ind. 
L. Slusser, M. D., Canal Fulton, 0. 

J. C. Small, Esq., Toronto, C. W. 
J. S. Small, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

D. S. Smalley, Esq., West Roxbury, Mass. 
A. A. Smets, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

Smith, English &, Co., Booksellers, Philadelphia (5). 

David C. Smith, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Howard Smith, M. D., New Orleans, La. 

J. B. Smith, Esq., M. P., London. 

J. Gay Smith, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

John Smith, Esq., Wilkesbarre, Pa. 

Joseph P. Smith, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Lloyd P. Smith, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Stark. B. Smith, M. D., Windsor, N. C. 

Madame Smyth, London. 

Jas. Solly, Esq., Toll End, Tipton, Eng. 

Mrs. Speir, London. 

Osborn Springfield, Esq.,Catton, near Norwich, Eng 

Hon. E. Geo. Squier, Fonseca, Honduras. 

Thomas Jefferson Staley, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

T. 0. Stark, Esq., New Orleans, La, 

Holmes Steele, M. D., Savannah, Ga. 

Albert Steiu, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Lewis H. Steiner, M. D., Baltimore, Md. 

John Stoddard, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

*M. le Dr. Here. Straus-Durckheim, Jardin des 

Plantes, Paris. 
Stringer & Townsend, Booksellers, New York (10 c.) 
T. W. Strong, Esq., New York. 
George Sutton, M.D., Aurora, Ind. 
Samuel Swan, Esq., Montgomery, Ala. 
J. A. Symonds, Esq., M. D., Clifton, Bristol, Eng. 

Rev. Edward Taggart, Wildwood, Hampstead, Eng. 

Benjamin Tanner, Esq., Baltimore, Md. 

Rev. John James Tayler, LondOD. 

A. K. Taylor, Esq., Memphis, Tenn. 

Franck Taylor, Bookseller, Washington, D. C. (10 e.) 

Henry Taylor, Bookseller, Baltimore, Md. (25 copies.) 

J. K. Tefft, Esq., Savannah, Ga. 

W. H. Tegarden. Esq., New Orleans, La. 

J. C. Thompson, Esq., Mobile, Ala. 

Samuel Thompson, M. D., Albion, HI. 

John Thorn, M. D., Baltimore, Md. 

Ticknor & Co., Booksellers, Boston, Mass. (12 copies.) 

Alexander Tod, Esq., Egypt. 

Hon. R. Toombs, U. S. SeDate, Washington, D. C. 

D. Torrey, Esq., Davenport, Iowa. 

H. R. Troup, M. D., Darien, Ga. 

D. H. Tucker, M. D., Richmond, Ya. 

J. C. Turner, Dr. D. S., Mobile, Ala. 

T. I. Turner, M.D., U.S.N., Philadelphia, Pa, 

Prof Wm. W. Turner, Washington, D. C. 



656 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 



J. Knight Uhler, M. B., Schuylkill Falls, Pa. 
Wm. M. Uhler, M. B., Philadelphia, Pa. 
J. E. Ulhorn, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
Wilkins Updike, Esq., Kingston, R. I. 

Prof. Gilb. S. Yance, M. B., Univ. of La., New Orleans. 
Henry Yanderlinder, Esq., New Orleans, La. 
"William S. Yaux, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

F. F. Walgamuth, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Sir Joshua Walmsley, M. P., London. 

J. Mason Warren, M. B., Boston, Mass. 

James S. Waters, Bookseller, Baltimore, Md. (10 c.) 

A. I. Watson, Esq., U. S. N., Washington, D. C. 

Hewett C. Watson, Esq., Thames Ditton, Surrey, Eng. 

John G. Wayt, M.B., Richmond, Ya, 

Thomas H. Webb, M. D., Boston, Mass. 

Prof. J. C. P. Wederstrandt, M.B., Univ. of La., New 

Orleans. 
Wm. Weightman, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
J. R. Welsh, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Mrs. C. E. Weyman, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Wm. W. Wbite, Esq., Concrete, Texas. 
James S. Wbitney, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Jacob B. Wbittemore, M.B., Chester. N. H. 
Morris S. Wickersham, Esq., Philadelphia. Pa. 
Prof. George B. Wilber, M. D., Mineral Point, Wis. 
W. C. Wilde, Esq., New Orleans, La. 



Wiley & Halsted, Booksellers, New York (12 copies). 

Wm. Wilkins, Esq., Charleston, S. C. 

Robt. B. Wilkinson, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

W. A. Wilkinson, Esq., M. P., London. 

Mark W 7 ilJcox, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

G. Clinton Williams, Esq., Washington, B.C. 

W. Thorne Williams, Bookseller, Savannah, Ga. (25) 

Prof. Bank Wilson, LL.B.,Univ. Coll., Toronto, C. W. 

Thos. B. Wilson, M. B., Philadelphia, Pa. (2 copies.) 

Wm. Winthrop, Esq., Lcndon. 

lion. W. H. W 7 itte, Philadelphia, Pa. (2 copies.) 

Francis Wood, Esq., New Orleans. 

Prof, Geo. B. W T ood, M. B., Philadelphia. 

H. B. Woodfall, Esq., London. 

James Woodhouse & Co., Booksellers, Richmond, Ya 

(10 copies.) 
S. W. Woodhouse, M. B., Fort Belaware, Bel. 
J. J. Woodward, Esq., West Philadelphia, Pa. 
S. M. Woolston, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Thos. H. Wynne, Esq., Richmond, Ya. 

J. A. Yates, Esq., London. 

James Yates, Esq., M. A., F. R. S., Highgate, Eng. 

The Misses Yates, Liverpool, Eog. 

Richard V. Yates, Esq., Liverpool, Eng. 

Easton Yonge, M.B., Savannah, G a. 

W. B. Zeiber, Bookseller, Philadelphia, Pa. (5 copies.) 



ADDITIONAL NAMES. 

Andrew H. Armour & Co., Booksellers, Toronto, C. W. (4 copies.) 

Charles A. Brown, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Thomas Hartley, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Henry Steegman, Esq., New York. 

R. M. Smith, M.B., Athens, Ga. (2 copies.) 



THE END. 



N 



LE A? '09 



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